Fresh Hop Ales - Fall 2014

I've got to be honest. I'm shocked at all the love Hop Trip is getting. Personally, I've always found it to be unremarkable. Out here in hop country there are dozens of fresh hop ales that do it so much better. You rarely see it at fresh hop fests or fresh hop tap takeovers ... I presume it gets bumped by other superior brews.

 

Fremont's Cowiche Canyon fresh hop beers kick some serious ass and I suggest people try to get their hands on them next year!!! So damn good!

 

I ran through as many fresh hop beers as possible this year.

Chasin' Freshies
Hop Trip
High Tide
Hop Stalker
Founders Harvest
BrooDoo
Sensei
Victory Harvest
Great Divide
Hop Knife

I love that fresh, raw, earthy, dank taste. Tough to pick my favorites, but my top 3 for the year would probably be Victory Harvest, High Tide and Chasin' Freshies. I have to point out that these were all new to me this year. Founders Harvest, Hop Trip, BrooDoo, and Great Divide were great as always.

 

Fresh hop beers are one of my favorite "styles." I was fortunate to try about 25 fresh hop beers this year, and I gathered info on ~250 of them from different breweries across the country as a personal project. My favorites of the beers I tried were the fresh hop version of Laurelwood Workhorse, Fort George's Fresh IPA, and the fresh hop version of Breakside's IPA.

 

I think it's likely because it usually comes out late in the season. Most of the fests/taps/tap takeovers I went to were late Sept/early Oct. Deschutes stuff came out late Oct I think? I thought it was weird because it came out 2 weeks after the last tap of fresh hopped beer disappeared.

When I think about it this seemed like an abnormally long fresh hop season. I had my first one late Aug, and my last one end of Oct. I thought I was tired of fresh hopped beers after drinking 40ish fresh hopped beers this season, but now thinking about it I just want more...

 

Just grabbed a bunch of chasing Freshies and harvest wet hop. Need to chill them for another night.