Wet Hop Showdown

This would indicate that you are correct: https://www.balebreaker.com/beer/sesiones-del-migrante-mango-ipa

 

The family that owns Bale Breaker is (IIRC) 4th generation hop ranchers, and carved a chunk out of one of their fields for the brewery: https://www.balebreaker.com/

 

American Pale Ales, wet hopped, are also an option. The one I am drinking from Great Divide is fantastic.

 

That place looks cool and their beers are rated pretty well. I will have to keep a note on them and if ever traveling I will check this place out, it looks really nice.
Cheers and thanks for info

 

I would disagree pretty vociferously that Celebration is “meh.”

If that’s “meh,” give me “meh” all day. I buy this every year, and every year it astounds me. The juxtaposition between the piney, citrusy hops and the subtle caramalt takes me to my happy beer nerd place.

YMMV, but calling that beer “meh” is a bit extreme, especially to style.

 

If you park away from the brewery building, the bumper of your car will be about 5 feet from the bines. They're a must hit if you come out here.

 

Their beers are rated well and, in my opinion, they are underrated. World class hoppy beers

 

A lot of NW breweries have some decorative plants growing, but nowhere near the scale of Bale Breaker. Sierra Nevada and Rogue both have estate acreage devoted to hops, but it’s a fraction of their annual demand.

 

That’s not too different from my experience. These days, I only work with Crosby Hop Farm and Hop Head Farms. I’m unsure of Hop Head’s size, I use some of their own grown hops (their Chinook is incredible) but I use more of the hops they source from larger growers (Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, and German hops) so that I can still get premium lots of the proprietary hops. However, I go to Crosby for lot selections every year and they’re getting close to 500 acres in the ground. At that size, they’re still considered a small operation.

At Crosby, they are expanding their picker and kiln now so that they can harvest faster, but this year using Amarillo as an example, they had 2 fields of Amarillo. It took 2 days to harvest each one, so I had 4 Amarillo lots to select from. While I’m sure they want to harvest it all in the one day they determine it’s ready to harvest, I actually like having the “extra” lots. There is a noticeable difference in the aroma from the first to second day and last year my favorite lot was one that Masthead (who I observed doing selection) ranked 3rd. To compare lot sizes to a bigger operation, my Idaho 7 was contracted through Crosby but sourced from a different farm. The reason to do this is that Crosby’s processing is incredible and their pelletizing process retains more oils as well as what I think of as “true hop” aroma. I had 6 Idaho 7 lots to select from and there was about 100k lbs per lot. I think the Crosby grown Amarillo lots were about 20k lbs each. I’ve also toured Hopsteiner in Germany and it makes Crosby look tiny in comparison.

About a month before harvest starts we get sent a picking window for wet hops. It’s a moving target. Last year, the Amarillo wet hops I used were harvested 2 days earlier than the projected window, then when the first field was completed, the second field wasn’t ready yet, so they moved to Nugget harvesting and came back to Amarillo a few days later. The head of the operation is observing the hops and smelling them daily. Blake Crosby is incredibly talented when it comes to this judgement call (he’s also a 6th generation hop farmer). They have a general schedule for the workers, but in the morning they confirm the field to go to. Last year they had Comet for the first time and so they didn’t have historical data. I believe it was also the first Oregon grown Comet. They were out there one day and thought it would be a couple more days, then Blake went out the next day and called an audible to have the workers harvest it right then.

Seeing the migrant workers ability to work basically unsupervised is incredible. A lot of them go back year after year and in one case, a guy has a full time job in Mexico that he leaves to go on “vacation” driving the truck for the hops because he loved it so much when he did it years ago. Those guys build a lot of experience and can come right in and get to work right away. I made a comment that so many breweries in the USA have trouble finding competent employees to pull tap handles, but the farm had almost a hundred people come in and get to work efficiently and expertly with millions of dollars of equipment to operate. I don’t see how the harvest season could work without migrant workers. I think there was around 90 of them at Crosby doin everything from harvest to pelletization. At the end of the season, all that’s left for the permanent employees is really sales, so it’s not feasible to keep 90 employees year round. It was like a ghost town going up there for Idaho 7 selection which occurred a week after the last hops were harvested, kilned, and baled. All that was left was a few workers running the pellet mill.

 

^^^ Many thanks @honkey, outstanding post!

 

Only had two so far this year.

The first was Tree House - Dear Washington, and the other was Born Yesterday.

I'm such a sad Tree House fanboy, but I'll admit their "wet/fresh" hop beer was underwhelming. Good, but not anything special. Doesn't really work for a NEIPA style beer IMO. Far too sweet.

Born Yesterday is definitely hitting the spot, though. The Mosaic really shines here. I know this one is "unfiltered" but it's still a West Coast pale ale through and through. Sweet and citrusy up front, dank and bitter on the finish. Very good. Got two 6 packs for good measure.

 

Hmm, a New England Wet Hop IPA.

That’s interesting. Too bad it didn’t work out. I can understand it not working though.

 

Celebration is a favorite of mine, its always a worthwhile buy. I didn’t see any other SN Wet Hops here, perhaps I just missed.