Beer Guide, WashingtonNorthwest Beer GuideAugust 31, 2018Northwest Beer Guide, Oregon, Washington, Guide to Fresh Hops 2018Comment

Northwest Beer Guide: 2018's Fresh Hop brewery guide.

Beer Guide, WashingtonNorthwest Beer GuideAugust 31, 2018Northwest Beer Guide, Oregon, Washington, Guide to Fresh Hops 2018Comment

Let's get something off our chest right away. Fresh hops are, by our definition, hops that are added to the beer as a late addition (to provide aroma) either during fermentation or during the brewing cycle. A fresh hop, in our definition, is not hops that were recently freeze-dried or kilned before use.

So what's a fresh hop?

It's any hops stripped from the vine either by hand or by the 'wolf' (a nickname for the stripper that removes the hop flower from the vine) and delivered to a brewery all within 1 - 12 hours after being stolen from the hop trellis.

image sourced from Allagash Brewing's Flickr page via Creative Commons 2.0

Beers made with fresh hops are not exclusively comprised of hops picked fresh off the vine. Instead, the name is indicative of any beer made with at least one addition of fresh hops. It can be a "S.M.A.S.H" (or Single Hop and Single Malt) made with Centennial hops both fresh and in pellet form, an India Pale Ale (made with Simcoe and Citra hops) or a Double IPA (made with Citra, Warrior, and Strata hops).

Also, where the fresh hops are introduced isn't important, so long as they are introduced. They can be added to the "hot side" (a term to describe the brewing process) either in the whirlpool, hopback tank, or after the wort has been transferred or they can be used a post-fermentation aromatic commonly called dry-hopping.

How do you know it's a fresh hop, beyond someone telling me?

Beyond the customary aromatics (e.g. citrus, pine, dank, earthy, etc.) one should expect to encounter characteristics like vegetal or chlorophyll-like when compared with the traditional, drier, hops which produce profiles like flavors and aromas like grapefruit, nectarine, mango, dank, and melon. In the region, one example of a brewery that uses only fresh hops is Bale Breaker with their Piled High Imperial IPA.

Do not cellar (aka, save for a rainy day)!

Also, unlike their contemporaries - be it India pale ale, double/imperial India pale ale, etc.; these beers have an accelerated decaying rate. This means that a beer either in the keg or bottle consumed the first week of release might leave an entirely different impression a few days or weeks after. For this reason, we cannot stress that if you buy it in the bottle, to consume immediately or shortly after purchase.

So where do I go to get one of these fresh hop beers?

We've reached out to a few breweries in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington to do the hard work for you. However, there are some caveats that come with this information. First, not every brewery is going all in by making a beer composed completely of fresh hops. Second, not every brewery is releasing one immediately. Third, some of the beers will only be made available at the brewery. So now would be a good time to practice the art of patience and navigating with a map.

Alright already! Where do I go to try one?

Some 45 or so breweries have responded to our request with information. Of those, we were able to compose almost 40 unique beers released as early as this weekend and as late as early October. With all this information we created a unique homepage for beers in Oregon and beers in Washington. Should we get beers from Idaho, we will include this in our list. In addition to this, we have included a handy field guide to learn more about the hops that breweries included are using.