How to Run Your Own Fantasy FoBAB League 2026 + Power Rankings

The 2026 edition of the Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer is just around the corner. And just as a beer can be enhanced by barrel-aging, a festival can be enhanced by friendly wagering! For the past seven years, we’ve run a Fantasy FoBAB league with some of our beer loving friends – and with a little hasty planning, you can run your own. 

Here’s what you need to know to run your own Fantasy FoBAB league:

• The Simple Concept: Draft breweries who you think have the greatest chance to win medals at FoBAB this year. Each medal win translates to points. The team(s) with the top points win.
• Gather Teams/Competitors: Our league is 10 teams, but this can certainly be done with fewer or more. We draft six breweries each, and that can also be adjusted based on the size of your league. Craig and I have also done a 1-vs.-1 draft for a side wager (choosing 10 breweries each), and that’s a lot of fun too.
• Plan: Consider our Power Rankings (see below) or consult our FoBAB Medal History sheet to plan your desired brewery picks. (As a tip, some breweries post their FoBAB entries to their social media accounts, in case you want a peek into competition entries.)
• Draft: We did this: we randomly generated a draft order using a free online draft generator. We did an email draft amongst 10 team managers, with “awake” hours from 8AM to 10PM. Each manager had a four-hour window to make their selection, and if they did not pick within that window, they would have a brewery auto-drafted for them based on our FoBAB Fantasy Power Rankings. Teams were still welcome to draft outside of the “awake” hours if they chose, but no team would be penalized for not selecting during that time.
• Scoring: The scoring works like this:
  • Gold medal = 3 points
  • Silver medal = 2 points
  • Bronze medal = 1 point
  • Best of Show = 3 additional points
  • Runner-up = 2 additional points
• Prizes: Whatever you want! Put up rare beers, quality fresh 4-packs, or a few bucks. Who cares? It’s fun either way. 

Here’s a Fantasy FoBAB Master Draft Spreadsheet for a 10 team, 6-pick league that you can copy and modify for your own league. 

If you’re playing along at home with your own FoBAB Fantasy Draft for the 2026 season, we the non-experts at ABV Chicago have drafted up our Power Rankings for your draft preparation. 

The list was prepared by two people using their arbitrary opinions and limited experience, so take it for what it’s worth. To be honest, it’s probably a lot more fun if you don’t base your picks off of our silly Power Rankings, as you will definitely disagree with many parts of the list. And since there are 156 participating breweries listed on the FoBAB website, this list overlooks many breweries – so we undoubtedly missed a lot of great stuff. 

The rankings were made based on a combination of several factors:

• Medal history: Using our master spreadsheet of Medal History, we gave higher placement to breweries that have won the most medals, but especially if those medals have come over the last few years. Previous Best of Show and Runner-Up awardees were valued somewhat highly. 
• Multiple locations: For simplifying our Fantasy Draft, each team manager is only allowed to pick one brewery that has multiple locations. As far as we understand, multiple locations means more entries which of course means a higher chance to win. We also didn’t want to bog down the draft with separating out each location. So, they are drafted as a collective. This gives great value to picking More or Firestone Walker or any other multiple-location brewery. (They are marked in the rankings with plus signs representing the number of breweries combined.)
• Style variance: Some breweries enter beer in multiple, distinctly different categories, while others focus primarily on producing beer that fits in just one or two of the categories. Though, the number of categories are pretty split in terms of “sours” vs. “stouts”, which we know is reductive. But certainly, choosing a cider-producer or mead maker has its limitations, as there’s really only one category for those to compete. But the number of competitors is much smaller as well, so choosing a cider or mead producer might be a late-round value pick.
• Reputation: A combination of our subjective experiences and recent wins in other prestigious beer awards, a brewery that has a reputation for excellent barrel-aged beers will be pushed up the list. There are also some breweries that have never medaled but may have gained a strong enough reputation whether through a brewer’s history or through word-of-mouth that might be a fun and risky pick, so we pushed them up as well. 
• Our Subjective Personal Experience: We are not beer judges or experts in any way, but we do drink a lot of beer critically and have been for many years, so I guess we’re allowed to have an opinion. Some breweries may have been pushed up the list because we arbitrarily decided that their barrel-aged beers are better than other breweries’ barrel-aged beers without having tried all breweries’ barrel-aged beers. Makes sense, right?

So we present to you the Power Rankings without further defending our choices. We’re in a time where the smallest unknown brewery can out-barrel the 30-year pros. FoBAB is almost more fun when a list like this one turns out all wrong. I’m raising my tiny taster glass to all of the breweries on (or not on) this list.

ABV Chicago’s Fantasy FoBAB 2026 Power Rankings

1. The Lost Abbey
2. More Brewing Company+++
3. Verboten Brewing and Barrel Project++
4. Sun King Brewery+++
5. Off Color Brewing++
6. Revolution Brewing
7. Firestone Walker+++
8. Half Acre Beer Company
9. Black Horizon Brewing
10. Werk Force Brewing Co.
11. Third Eye Brewing Company++
12. Cerebral Brewing++
13. Old Irving Brewing Co./Production++
14. Lupulin Brewing Company
15. Bubblehouse Brewing
16. Cruz Blanca Brewery
17. Goose Island Beer Company
18. Hidden Hand Brewing
19. Resident Culture Brewing++
20. Idyll Forest Artisan Ales
21. Kros Strain Brewing
22. Breakside Brewery
23. Pollyanna Brewing
24. Treehive
25. Destihl Brewery
26. Monochrome Brewing
27. Boulevard Brewing++
28. River North Brewery++
29. 3 Floyds
30. Mikerphone Brewing
31. Full Mile Beer Co. & Kitchen
32. WeldWerks Brewing Co.
33. Forbidden Root++
34. Noon Whistle Brewing++
35. Phase Three Brewing- Chicago/Lake Zurich++
36. Imperial Oak Brewing++
37. Brothership Brewing
38. Sketchbook Brewing++
39. Maplewood Brewery & Distillery
40. Lakefront Brewery
41. Jukes Ale Works
42. Haymarket Brewing++
43. pFriem Family Brewers
44. Masthead Brewing Company
45. Neuronova Brewing
46. Good Times Brewery
47. Roaring Table
48. Solemn Oath Brewery
49. other half brewing
50. UPP Liquids
51. Final Gravity Brewing Company
52. Midwest Coast Brewing
53. Shoreline Brewery
54. Milieu Fermentation
55. Loose Ends Brewing
56. 3 Sheeps Brewing
57. Cahaba Brewing Co.
58. Yazoo Brewing
59. White Oak Brewing
60. G5 Brewing Company
61. Jackie O’s Brewery
62. Nine Giant Brewing
63. Finback Brewing
64. Penrose Brewing
65. Pryes Brewing Company
66. Transient Artisan Ales
67. Church Street Brewing Company
68. False Idol Brewing
69. Lake Time Brewing and Spirits
70. Derive Brewing
71. Mangata Beer Co.
72. Barn Town Brewing
73. Riverlands Brewing
74. Begyle Brewing
75. Middle Brow
76. Seedz Brewery
77. Adams Street brewery
78. Homewood Brewing Co.
79. Benchtop Brewing
80. Horse Thief Hollow Brewing Co.
81. The Veil Brewing Co.
82. Streetside Brewery
83. Millpond Brewing
84. Wandering Monsters Brewing
85. Flossmoor Station Restaurant & Brewery
86. Humble Forager
87. Hailstorm Brewing
88. Ever Grain Brewing Company
89. Big Grove Brewery
90. Pipeworks Brewing Co.
91. Braxton Brewing Company
92. Scribbled Lines Brewing Company
93. The Brew Kettle
94. Soundgrowler Brewing Co.
95. Lake Effect Brewing
96. Reserve Artisan Ales
97. Flipside Brewing
98. Subculture Artisan Ales
99. Tangled Roots Brewing
100. Go Brewing