Oriental Brewery's Budweiser won "Best of 2026," awarded to the highest-scoring imported beer at the Korea Wine & Spirits Awards 2026.
The Korea Wine & Spirits Awards is Korea's leading liquor competition, now in its 13th year. ChosunBiz has held it annually since 2014 with the goal of "discovering and widely promoting good domestic liquors and supporting the formation of a sound drinking culture."
This year's event drew 260 companies submitting a total of 1,118 brands. It is the largest among domestic competitions that cover all categories of liquor. Of these, 449 brands won the grand prize.
Budweiser is an American-style premium lager born in 1876 and is sold in about 85 countries. It features a distinctively smooth and clean beer taste thanks to a long fermentation time and the painstaking "beechwood aging" brewing process.
Budweiser boasts a distinctively smooth and clean taste through a long fermentation time and a meticulous brewing process. It is a lager fermented at a low temperature for 7 to 12 days and then matured below 0°C for 1 to 2 months, with abundant carbon dioxide saturating the beer to deliver a refreshing taste.
Unlike other lagers, Budweiser is made through "Kräusening," a natural carbonation fermentation process, and the beechwood-based maturation technique known as "beechwood aging." "Kräusening" means creating carbonation without using sugars. At this time, five ingredients—high-quality malt, rice, yeast, water, and hops—are blended together in Budweiser. An Oriental Brewery official said it is "the secret to creating Budweiser's unique crispness."