Fresh Hop Beers

My favorites this year have been:

Crux -- Mo Fresh Hop DIPA
Laurelwood -- FH Workhorse
Holy Mountain -- Ritual (Citra pale with Brett)
Holy Mountain -- Amarillo FH Pale
Fremont -- Cowice Canyon FH Pale (as always)
Ft. George -- Fresh IPA (Mosaic this year)
Lagunitas -- Born Yesterday
Georgetown -- FH Johnny Utah
Georgetown -- FH Cousin Eddie IPL
Breakside -- FH Wanderlust

I've had around 40 fresh hops so far this year and have a few more in the fridge and a couple on the way from Minnesota.

 

Wait. What is considered “fresh hopped”, I just assumed any IPA younger than three month was technically fresh. 0.o

 

From the ones I tried so far, I liked Victory Harvest Ale the best, followed by Sierra Nevada N. Hemisphere. I thought Great Divide Fresh Hop and Founders Harvest Ale were good beers. I was unimpressed by Sixpoint Sensi Harvest. I just picked up a six pack of Lagunitas Born Yesterday. I'll try that one out tonight.

 

A beer brewed with hops freshly picked off the vine, not dried. Breweries out in WA and OR drive over to the hop fields in Yakima and Willamette Valley and have them in the kettle later the same day.

 

Fresh hopping is different than dry-hopping. A fresh hop beer is made with green hops, freshly-picked, Troegs brewed theirs within 48 hours of picking. We made a couple of them this year, both pale ales. The beers were not dry-hopped, the fresh whole flowers were used in our hop-back. They both had the full aroma of a dry-hopped beer. The current one, which was bottled, was made with fresh Mosaic hops. I like it very much. It really demonstrates to me what a good name was given to the hop variety. I pick up new flavors and aromas every time I drink the beer. It's like a magical mystery tour.

 

It is also called a wet hop beer (i.e. hops are not dried), which leads to the seeming oxymoron of a dry hopped wet hop beer!

 

Sixpoint sensi

 

Drinkiing a Lagunitas Born Yesterday right now, I absolutely love it. Need to track down more.

 

For me, I tend to get more earthy flavored from fresh hops. Not necessarily something that I don't like, it is just different.

 

Here are my faves of the ones I've had this year:

La Cumbre's Project Dank (Wet Hop version)
Bosque Brewing's Acequia Wet Hop IPA
Lagunitas Born Yesterday


Sierra Nevada's Celebration is an Ol' Faithful.

 

Lagunitas Born Yesterday
Founders Harvest Ale

 

I'll refrain from my normal rant against SN and their terminology with Celebration, but it uses dried hops.

 

Nailed it! In that order, though not by much. (I must add Sierra Nevada's Celebration to this ... looking forward to it!)

 

I got some Lagunitas Born Yesterday, yesterday. It was 3 days old and delicious.

 

100% agreed with both and in that order. Born Yesterday is outstanding.

I was a little disappointed in Sixpoint's Sensi. I normally enjoy their beers, but this one didn't do it for me. Not a bad beer, just not one for me.

 

Founders Harvest Ale is the best. If I can find more I would probably stock up.

 

From the Teme Valley Brewery website "Our green hop beers. 5 single hop varietal beers brewed during hop harvesting using un-kilned hops. These fresh hops are pitched to the boiling beer within an hour of picking to make more flavour and aroma available to the beer. All 5 are exceptionally pale and feature the hops prominently"

 

Fremont Cowiche Canyon Pale ale is superb! Would love to try the IPA.Also want to try born yesterday.

 

Their web site explains their use of the term "fresh hops".
They use "fresh" to mean "fresh but dried", in their words, "Fresh Hops are the freshest dried hops to come from the fields, typically within seven days of harvest."

Last year, Summit tried a similar approach to brewing a fresh hopped beer, and as with SN, they did not try to hide anything about what they were doing.

I haven't tried SN Celebration, but if the Summit Harvest Fresh IPA is similar, the wet hop just brings more to the party, IMO.