Fresh Hop 2020

A few new ones to add as the season winds down. I still have 5 or 6 cans of HFOFH and will buy more if I see it around. Think I drank that through November last year. Just had Stoup FH Idaho-7 and Mosaic tonight, I thought both were quite good. As someone else said earlier in this thread, just very clean. Also had a Lagunitas Born Yesterday; not sure it qualifies or not, but I always really enjoy that beer.

P.S. Cheers to the Astros losing tonight. I think it's wonderful that they came all the way back from down 3-0 to tie the series, only to lose in Game 7. Increases the pain.

Updated FH rankings, not that they mean a damn thing.

Top tier
1. Fremont HFOFH
2. Fremont Cowiche Canyon
3. Sunriver Green Initiative
4. Reuben's FH Double Crush
5. Bend Strata FH
6. Breakside What Fresh Beast
7. Urban Family Stratosphere
8. Stoup FH Mosaic
9. Ruse FH Translator
10. Lagunitas Born Yesterday
11. Single Hill Skyfinder
----
Second tier—still very, very good
12. Stoup FH Idaho-7
13. Single Hill Ecstasy of Green
14. Bend Fresh Trop Simcoe
15. Bale Breaker Homegrown #4
16. Stoup FH Citra
----
Third tier—not bad but not necessarily seeking it out again
17. Fremont Field to Ferment (I just can't do Sabro hops)
18. Sasquatch FH Mouth Pillow
19. Matchless CSA
----
Fourth tier—I appreciate the effort, but really not for me
20. Hellbent Amarillo Fresh Hop Hazy IPA
21. Riverbend Millennials Hate Centennials
22. Crux Pert Near

 

I’m a little surprised but not shocked that Fremont would be #1 & 2. Not that it really matters. I’m not sure how much Fremont cans gets distributed outside of Washington. But we here in CA gets our fair share of Fremont. And this year we got all 3 versions of their wet hops. Before we left for our 4 day Seattle (Puyallup) trip last weekend I bought Fremonts CCFHA & FtFFHP 6pk & 4pk respectively at my locals in OC. Both were very good, IMO. HFOFH/Hazy hadn’t shown up yet. So when up north I purposely didn’t get any of Fremonts cans. Instead I tried everything WA, except for Great Notion‘s Georgetown IPA’s(OR or WA?). I enjoyed everything from Fort George including their FoG. But the last night I had a fresh can of Fresh Hop Citra From Crucible that was a couple of 3 days old. It was my favorite. Back home in OC, CA I bought Fremonts HFOFH/Hazy and yes it was delicious. But can you compare a fresh wet hop hazy to a clear wet hop? I would put them in 2 different categories.
Excellent list by the way. It helped me while I was in WA. Thx.

 

Enjoying a Cloudburst/Holy Mountain wetwired. And I had another can of Cone & Cone last evening, that one is among my absolute favorites from fresh hop season 2020. Really outstanding stuff. Cheers!

 

Enjoying this one from Abomination. Glad to bring this one back to OC.

 

Sitting on the patio with Mrs. vurt, enjoying the mild weather and drinking an Oakshire Hop Harvest Fresh Hop Hazy IPA.



It's too sweet for me for an IPA and I don't get a lot of fresh hop character to offset that sweetness. Ah well.

Mrs. vurt, on the other hand, is enjoying a Fort George Farmer's Annuary IPA which was canned 9 days ago.

 

The last fresh hop beer in my fridge at this end of the weekend is This One Goes To 12, a fresh hop imperial IPA collaboration between Single Hill and Stoup:



The label tells us there are multiple additions of Chinook and Mosaic, and the nose confirms it with plenty of pine sap and diesel. It is less sweet than the Oakshire beer I had before this, with layers of fresh hop goodness in the finish. Mango, pine, blueberry, diesel, a little citrus tang threading everything together.

Sampling these Single Hill beers has been a real trip, and I'm glad to have had the chance to try them this season.

 

Not sure if you are aware, but Abomination isn't from here—it's in Pennsylvania, according to BA. They're part of something called the Twelve Percent Beer Project, through which some breweries on the other side of the country—a lot of contract breweries, apparently—have distribution here. I wondered why the New Seasons in Mercer Island (RIP) all of a sudden had a bunch of beers from CT and other far-flung places, and that's why. (I haven't had the Citra version of this particular beer, but I thought the Simcoe one was really good.) https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/12-percent-beer-project.607101/

 

First up tonight, FH Super Ripe from Great Notion. Big juicy citrus and dank hops, but it doesn't really hit the "fresh" notes, maybe the sweetness is hiding the grassy green hop character. Good but not great for me.

 

FH Pallet Jack w/ Mosaic is absolutely crushing it. Huge fruit and resin, hop aroma is amazing, nice green bitter edge to it. Top tier for this year, no doubt.

 

I'm finally checking back in on this thread after having had way more fresh hops than I thought I'd have. I'm down to my last can in the fridge and will soon take a beer break. Looking back, I'd say without any reservation that the Stoup fresh hops were far and away the best of what I had, nearly every variety. As I might have mentioned, I detest hazies so had only a few of those and always by accident --- server either didn't know it was a hazy or had a different definition of a hazy than me.

My biggest disappointment this fresh hop season was Fremont. I usually buy a shit ton of Cowiche but could only get my hands on two 6-packs --- and I thought this year's was as good as always and always near the top of my favorites. The limited production of Cowiche was/is disappointing in and of itself. But as I'm noticing F2F (not a fan of Sabro) languishing on the shelves and seeing some HFOFH still on the shelves, I wonder what they were going for. Maybe chasing the fickle hipster/Millenial/Gen Z crowd was a miscalculation? Regardless, Fremont disappointingly has moved to a second-tier brewery for me. And this after many, many years as a shameless fanboy.

Cheers, my friends.

 

?????

HFOFH was damn good this year (IMO. and im also not a big fan of hazies). Cowiche was also excellent (even you said so). Didnt try F2F yet, but not sure how that beer relates to millenial/GenZ crowd?

Distro / brewing capacity / product line stuff comes up all the time for these places, especially during a pandemic. I also wish more CC (especially fresh CC) would have made it out to the public, but I think Fremont is still as good as ever

 

"Second-tier" overall, or just "second-tier" for fresh hops?

If it's the latter, I'm a little perplexed as to how one disappointing season of fresh hop beers can undo "many, many years as a shameless fanboy."

Edit: No disrespect intended. I wouldn't try to tell you what you should or shouldn't enjoy, or why. More than anything else, I'm curious as to what happened between you and Fremont.

 

Maybe I was feeling a bit salty this morning when I wrote all this...I still feel some love for Fremont, especially the peeps. But I realize that I'm not hanging out at the UBG and I buy less and less of their beer, especially their new hoppy releases. It's not my scene and their shift to hazies isn't my thing.

 

had a FH IPA from second profession brewing last night. not bad, not great either.

 

I did my best to drink as many of these as possible in my first Fresh Hop season living in Oregon. It was a glorious time. Thank you all for your recommendations. Like many of you, I found Fresh Hop Pallet Jack to be amongst the cream of the crop. Breakside made some magic, as well. The half dozen or so of theirs that I sampled were all top notch. They could probably make a fresh hop bowl of dog food and I'd enjoy it. Fresh Hop Wander Jack, mmmmmm. Biggest surprise for me was Deschutes BFR Nugget Fresh Hop IPL - piny and crisp and just lovely.

 

nice! welcome to the NW. glad you found a random one that surprised you. My surprise of the year was probably the Migration Fresh outta Portland.... that first run of cans were glorious. totally agree on Breakside, as i think this was their best year making FH beers. Fresh Guy 1 hour after being tapped was sublime.

 

And without you and @vurt talking it up, I would have completely missed it- thanks again!

 

FH Pallet Jack never disappoints!

What's the details on the Deschutes IPL, packaged with distro (fingers crossed)?

 

agreed on Migration - I had a couple different hop versions of the Fresh Outta Portland based on the chatter here, really nice and super fresh.