Fresh Hop Topcutter
Bale Breaker Brewing Company

 

16oz can from Boise Co-op. Clear golden pour, small white foamy head settles down to thin skin. Piney, hoppy aroma. Taste is piney, bitter, hop oil, resinous. Sticky feel with some lingering hard bitterness. Quite a punch.

Canned Sept 10th. Pour is a bright, clear light amber. Low head. Lots of aromas, mostly fruits with a bit of floral. Hop bitterness is strong and favorable. The fresh hops come into the finish where you pick up a pleasant grassiness on the tongue. Savor the beer as it warms slightly. Just 6.8% ABV.

 

2025-10-11
16oz can served in a curvy Monhegan pint glass. Packaged on 09/10/2025.

Clear dark gold, medium sized head. Smell is both bright and dank. Some honeysuckle or other unrecognizable flowers, some grass and resin.

Taste is more on the dank side, nice bitter twist at the end that makes me think almost of pine bark. Sweetness is there but not a wreck.

Mouthfeel is medium bodied, smooth, not cloying or sticky. Very good beer.

 

Poured from a 16 ounce can dated 9-10-25 into an IPA glass at 50 degrees.

Look- Medium gold, mildly hazy, plentiful large visible particulate, above average head retention, average lacing.

Smell- Dank, pine resin, grapefruit, between medium and high strength of scent.

Taste- Grapefruit, pine resin, ripe melon, between medium and high strength of flavor.

Feel- Between thin and medium body, average carbonation, highly bitter, highly prickly, mildly creamy, highly dry finish, mildly mouth warming.

Overall- The abundance of large particulate along with the clarity make this beer look like a snow globe. The aromatics were a mixture of dank, pine resin and grapefruit. Exactly what I wanted from a Fresh Hop WCIPA. Flavors were slightly out of balance with grapefruit somewhat masking the resinous piney character. Body was as expected with a nice amount of expected prickliness, but the finish was much drier than desired. Overall this beer provided an enjoyable first fresh hop experience for the year.

 

16oz can (packaged 9/11/2025) into a tulip. Pours a crystal clear honey/straw color with a 1-finger sudsy white head.

Aroma is classic West Coast IPA with abundant Simcoe and Citra: pine, citrus, and copious hop oils.

Taste follows nose: dank and oily with lots of grapefruit rind and resin. Some juicy orange, ripe melon, and more sticky pine as it warms. High IBU, reminiscent of classic early 2000s SoCal IPAs.

Mouthfeel is also oily and resinous with a lingering bitter finish.

While the hops are clearly the central focus here, I can’t say that the use of *fresh* hops necessarily is. This is without a doubt an excellent American IPA but I’m not sure I could have distinguished it from a non-fresh-hop version of its namesake beer.

maybe nobody in the world does better at fresh hop time than these guys, and its awesome to see them do a fresh hop version of this classic and iconic ipa, one of my first few fresh hop beers of the season and setting a pretty high bar, all fresh simcoe in this i believe, gorgeous beer, cant wait to drink the other three pint cans today! crystal clear pour, light rust orange colored, pure white head on top, high shine, really glowing, there is however some interesting sediment in the bottom of my can, looks almost like shredded coconut, sort of square sided white sticks, never really seen this sort of sediment in beer, but there isnt a ton of it, it settles quick, and i leave it in the bottom of the glass, we will see if the other cans also have that going on, a minor distraction from an otherwise exceptional beer, and frankly its still beautiful. the aroma is killer, spicy hops, less of the grapefruit thing we know and love simcoe for, danky and weedy, sweet orange and orange hard candy, oily and very fresh, somewhat simple overall, perfect grain base too, also seemingly very fresh which is cool in this, light graham cracker to it, neutral ferment, lemongrass as it warms. the flavor is similar, a cool side of simcoe, citrus without grapefruit, almost a rye malt sort of spice to it actually, earthy and green in a good way, trace coconut, tangerine, and chardonnay even, and it opens a lot as it sits, honey note to the grain, relatively punchy bitterness as the fresh hop stuff goes, this still has some late snap and bite, oils linger just a bit on the palate but the cleanness is a huge part of the appeal here, not a palate wrecker, a drinker. high carbonation and a lighter than it looks and tastes body, very easy down and even thirst quenching. so obviously made with just picked premium hops, this is wonderful stuff, pretty different from the original to me too, has its own identity.

edit: other cans in my pack have had the same weird stringy sediment, but still taste amazing, maybe even better on tap too, which i had last night, no weird particulate, loving this one!