These three beers from Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River, Ore., feature fresh hop variations with hops harvested from Sodbuster Farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
As access to fresh hops expands, breweries celebrate the ingredient in new ways, from hop harvest festivals to new ways of extracting wet hop flavors in seasonal beers.
Harvest ales—beers with just-picked hops—are as old a tradition as you can find in the craft beer world, dating all the way back to the prehistoric year of 1996. This year, there was a concerted commercial effort to release fresh hops to homebrewers.