Dominion Hop Harvest Ale
Fordham & Dominion Brewing Company

Tasted On-tap on 10/24/06 at the Old Dominion Brewpub in Ashburn, VA.

Hazy bronze color with a decent beige head and carbonation. Fairly subdued hop aroma with a more generic resiny hop aroma - not very varietal as Centennial and Cascade usually are. Nice hop resin flavors without being overly bitter. Nicely balanced. Medium bodied and smooth with a nice bitter finish.

I haven't had too many "wet hop" ales but this one seems pretty good. You seem to get the hop resins without the typical varietal characteristics (ie. no grapefruit like Cascade character).

Per ODBC website: To celebrate the autumn hop harvest, Dominion has brewed a wet hop ale. This harvest-style ale features fresh Cascade and Centennial hops from the hop fields of upstate NY. The hops were picked within 48 hours of brewing.

With all the "wet hop" ales coming out recently, we ought to be seeing a new style category perhaps. This offering from the Old Dominion Brewing Company was a light amber color, and the aroma was of toasted grain and earthy hops. The flavor was fairly balanced between the dry grainy notes and British style restrained tea-like hops. I did not really taste the fresh hop character so much compared to other examples, and the body was rather thin, I thought. It actually had an overall homebrew-like quality to it, and as it is Dominion's first attempt of this new style, there is plenty of room for this one to grow. Not a bad effort though.