Wet Hop Showdown

Haven't had Celebration yet this year. Would throw Northern Hemisphere in between BY and Harvest. They were all excellent beers IMHO.

 

Fresh Hop season is over for the year. There's a few stragglers about yet, but, August is a long way away.

 

The only 2 I've had were from small local breweries a Saison from Twin Elephant and a Pale Ale from Cricket Hill. Both were fine beers.

 

In this era of hyper fresh and local and the very limited shelf life of this style, it seems that there is the PNW experience of the late Aug/early September local releases and then the nationally distributed few that come out much later. I was in No Cal last September and amazed at the number wet hops on tap--lighter than the 7%ish things like Born Yesterday and Harvest. I imagine there are a good number in the northeast that we never see. Locally, NoDa does one that has a brief run and is one their better beers--Stick When Wet.

I saw much less wet hop beer on the shelves this year in NC than in years past for sure. Our experience is similar to the OP with distributed ones showing up late.

 

I picked up born yesterday last week and it is really good this year.

 

What's the difference between wet hop and fresh hop? I don't remember breweries using the fresh hop tag in past years. Were the wet hops not as good as past years? The places I frequent in SoCal saw a lot fewer wet hop beers on tap this year. The ones I did have were decent but not as good as prior years. For instance Fremont's head full of dynamite wet hop beer this year was pretty mediocre compared to last years I remember being outstanding! So it's left me wondering did my taste buds change? Is beer in general just better tasting today, leaving the wet hopped beers pale in comparison? Or was the crop this year inferior?

 

My local guys Wet/Fresh hop beers were great, very tasty. I did not bother with the big boys, by the time I see them around it sort of loses the whole fresh hop idea and becomes 2 month old hops like every other hoppy beer around.
Cheers

 

Celebration is an old school ipa with malt character and bitterness. Those who have been drinking it forever will always love it, we’ll at least that’s how I see it. I’ll go through a case of celebration and a six pack of born and a four pack of harvest.

If I did a side by side I would probably go the same order as you.

Fremont’s head full of fresh hops as well as Field to Ferment have been really good.

So far the best wet hop i’ve Had was Pizza Port’s Mosaic Ollie Pop.

 

Yep, I had mine over month ago. By now its just overflow around. I never understood why so many breweries sit and issue later, it sort of defeats the FRESH idea in my eyes.
Cheers

 

Wet hops are hops that are picked, not dried, and typically utilized in the brewery within 24 hours from the time they were harvested.

The Fresh Hops that Sierra Nevada uses to brew Celebration Ale are hops from this year's harvest that have been dried. They are fresh within the context of being that year's hop harvest. Sierra Nevada will brew multiple batches of Celebration Ale with these Fresh Hops during the year with the last batch being sometime in November (if my memory is serving me properly).

@SierraTerence may desire to provide additional details.

Cheers!

 

I hated Born Yesterday this year and picked up two bottles, with the second about a week after the first I finished 2/3 of it and dumped the rest. Celebration is enjoyable but over hyped to me but if we are including it while I didn't have any of this year's yet I would pick it over BY by a mile. Troegs Hop Knife Harvest IPA is good too.

Yeah, I am not really paying attention to any lines between wet/fresh/harvest beers so forgive me if I am not in line with the original topic.

 

An "enjoyable" beer at the price point of Celebration is "over hyped"? Add in the fact that complaining about the year-to-year variation in Celebration is a meme in itself and I would say "over hyped" is over hyped.

 

For those of us who have been around for a while yes, I found this beer to be over hyped. To give some context I remember a time when Celebration was THE IPA, and not just in a seasonal sense either, and when it arrived it would fly off of the shelves. So during this time when I first had it while I found it to be enjoyable I was far from blown away and did not think that it was much better than some of the other IPAs I had regular access to.

If we are talking about consistency and shelf stability and all of that good stuff I can see your point but then I would also point to many other beers like Hop Devil, Torpedo, etc. I respect Celebration for what it is but outside of any nostalgia tied to it I do not get what all of the fuss is about. And going further it's not that unique anymore even within the SN lineup and Northern Hemisphere and Resilience are close cousins. Not a knock but..

 

Copy and paste from the Lagunitas Born Yesterday thread:

My 2019 Wet Hops ranking is as follows (and fairly Minnesota centric):

Lagunitas Born Yesterday
Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere
Castle Danger Mosaic
Indeed Fresh Hop
Deschutes Chasin' Freshies
Surly Wet (too herbal for me this year)

Decided to skip Founders this year even before the debacle because they are incapable of getting it distributed to MN until like 3 to 4 weeks after bottling. Pathetic.

And Celebration isn't a Wet Hop, so not including. BUT, I would rank it #1 if I did.

 

Yea, probably a timing thing. I'm from Midwest and moved to East Coast from 2005-2008. I think I had my first Celebration when I moved back to Midwest in '08. By that time, Celebration was competing with year-round Two Hearted and I probably missed some of the hype. Now, more than ten years later though, I like Celebration more than ever. I think it's unique on the market--almost as much for it's malt profile as the hops. Northern Hemisphere is way more expensive. I rarely feel the urge to purchase SNs other hoppy beers these days, so maybe Celebration is scratching the itch.

 

Fremont, Fremont, Fremont

 

A lot (most) of the wet hop beers getting packaged in August are using hops harvested way too early. I tried a few early wet hop beers this year and they were really disappointing. A few of the later harvest hops would have only just been packaged a few weeks ago. Idaho 7 for example is typically harvested in late September