Fresh Hop 2024

Harder question. The VIP ticket was pretty expensive, and almost everything I tried I probably could have found in a store somewhere if I tried hard enough. For me, marginal. I enjoyed the festival environment, this is more "beer lovers only" than a regular beer festival, more staff in the booths than volunteers, which is nice.

 

See my other post in response to @vurt.

For sure, the top two beers I tried at the festival were Barley Brown's Mitch and Single Hill's Energy Cone.

 

Thank you. It's been stressful and trying, but she's hanging on for now. We thought we had years, and then we thought we might only have days, but I'm hoping now we've at least got a few months.

 

Citra Slicker

 

I think a number of brewers have acknowledged that most of their wet hop beers use a mix of hop types. You definitely have a whole slew of beers that come out at the beginning of the season that only use wet hops in the dry hopping phase of an otherwise finished beer. And just in general, if you want to use wet hops on the hot and cold side then you'll have to get separate harvests because those events are separated by a couple days.

As for your other terms, "organic" is the only one that's regulated at all in the US (although it seems like most people just sort of assume what they think it means rather than bothering with the actual regulations that govern it's use). Otherwise, it's all just marketing.

 

And I’m not necessarily suggesting that using 100% fresh hops in every stage of the brewing process is the only way to produce a FH beer—I’m just saying there are some potentially huge gray areas to what can be considered a fresh hop beer. An extreme example would be a beer where they throw a single fresh cone in the kettle and thus say, hey, we used fresh hops to brew this beer! After all, Froot Loops are “part” of a balanced breakfast

 

Sunriver Consistently Interesting Kolsch FH ,Lorien
Like this .second FH I have had with lorien hopt..loved both

 

110% agreed.

 

Ruse isn't usually a brewery I grab new releases from, but after reading a lot of the posts here I pounced on a Fresh Hop High on Fire with fresh Citra and I am very, very glad I did. It's a very well done hazy with tons of Citra pop. Highly recommend!

Tried out Fremont's Head Full of Fresh Hops yesterday as well. As others have said it's very well done; I'm just not sure I enjoy HBC 1019 all that much (likely I am in the minority here). But if you do like HBC 1019, by all means buy a bunch because you'll probably love it.

And sadly I drank my last Breakside FH XPA last night. Still a damn tasty beer, even though it was canned in August (gasp!). It is drying out a bit now though, so if you still have any might want to finish them off (unless of course you are doing science or really love a dryer XPA, then you do you).

 

Just went down to Bottleworks and picked up a 4-pack of SH Energy Cone. Based on some comments here I couldn’t wait to try it so I’m enjoying the first can out on the porch on this beautiful, warm fall day. It’s delicious.

I reported an update on the beer’s profile page, created by @FLBeerGuy, where I posted my review, as this seems to be brewed a little differently each year and there are already several other entries. Since this is year 5 I’m hoping BA can update all the profiles as something like Energy Cone: 2020 (Year 1), Energy Cone: 2021 (Year 2) etc.

 

Cross post w/ Spokane thread:
Lumberbeard Brewing is putting on a Fresh Hop festival on October 11-12. In addition to five from themselves, they'll also have at least that many from other breweries.

 

Good to know. When I went down to Bottleworks earlier today I was tempted to swing by Fremont and pick up a 4-pack of hazy Cowiche but decided against it. The last week or so has been pretty tough on the old credit card.

 

I wouldn’t consider whether to buy a 4-pack of beer to be a life choice. And you didn’t dictate it, you reinforced a decision I made for myself.