Wet Hopped IPAs - Fall 2016

Well, I didn't have as much time at it as you did, but I personally have lived for a few periods of my life in rural areas. So I don't think it's an rurual urban difference but a sourcing difference.

If the source doesn't get the produce picked and quickly moved to use or preservation processing quickly there isn't much point is there? Also the people buying that produce will pay a premium for freshly harvested produce rather than something sitting around for a while, etc.

 

So a potato in the root cellar is only fresh for 24 hours?

 

Perhaps there's a regional difference at play in the grocery stores where you and I shop, but I do not see a distinction between "fresh" and "fresh picked." I have never seen a store contrast those two terms, either by having two bins of apples/berries/whatever side by side with different prices or by any other method.

I don't argue against the historical use of "fresh" used by SN and in literature cited by jesskidden as being wrong, just outdated. Those references do pre-date the modern craft brewing era, but they also pre-date a cross-country refrigerated supply chain. Shipping wet hops more than a few miles would have been inconceivable with their technology level, so of course their context for what is considered fresh would be bound by the processes available at the time. When we have fresh produce from California and Chile and New Zealand in our supermarkets, I think it's clear the context for what is considered fresh has evolved since the first references to "fresh hops" were made.

 

Right. Which means that their expectations are for it to be fresh, not a few days old.

 

Yes. We sold fresh, new, baby potatoes for a premium, because they were out of the ground less than 24 hours. The week old taters were less expensive. At this point we're getting dangerously close to Bill Clinton territory. Bill did not have freshual relations with those hops.

 

Really liked Surly Wet last year. Super sad to hear they aren't making it this year.

 

You keep saying that many other breweries in other regions use the term "fresh" to signify "freshly dried hops" and not what we in the NW term "fresh hops" aka freshly picked from the bine and into the brew kettle in 24 hours ...
So my question is, who in the modern era of brewing other than Sierra Nevada, uses "fresh" this way? I'm not contradicting you, just genuinely curious who else uses the term this way. Personally, I've never seen any other brewery do this.

 

If you want to be extremely pedantic about it, we need to use about 8X the amount of hops by weight in a wet hop beer, than we use in a beer brewed with dried hops. The extra weight is "wet" water weight. So to be more accurate, all brewers and hop producers should be using wet vs fresh to describe un-kilned hops... we don't want to monkey with clarity, do we? That might seem like marketing!

 

By "many areas" I meant to refer not to the brewing industry, but to the areas of the use of the word fresh, including such things as produce, etc. Apologies if my comment was misleading.

Every supermarket around here has a "fresh produce" section to distinguish it from the canned, etc. processed foods. However that produce has also typically been pre-processed in some ways depending on how far it is from the farm. E.g., Some fruits from places such as CA, FL, WA, etc. are harvested before becoming fully ripe, gassed to ****** ripening, and then shipped across country, etc. being allowed to ripen more slowly with the ideal being they look nice and ripe in the store.

In at least two of the markets (whether super or otherwise) where we regularly shop, in the Fresh Produce section in the right season where will be a special section and signage focused on fresh picked produce and often naming the farm if it is near by. E.g., with in the last some weeks I have twice purchased "fresh picked corn on the cob from X" a really local place that grows berries, corn, pumpkins, etc.. Regularly, we see Jersey tomatoes (just the other side of the river) and sometimes the store again uses the term fresh picked Jersey tomatoes to indicate they are "farm fresh." If we drive over the river into Jersey a number of the roadside stands will not only say "fresh tomatoes and/or berries" but also include the information that they are fresh picked.

So I can't give you the names of any other breweries that talk about fresh hops from around here because I don't have that information in hand. However, my basic question is why should "fresh" be redefined when talking about hops to mean only picked and moved from bine to kettle within hours of being harvested when in many areas of food production etc. the term fresh picked (or it's analog) is used?

 

That's awesome, but what about the actual question I asked? What other breweries use the term fresh hopped to signify freshly kilned hops?

 

No offense, and also that sounds tasty to try, but in the words of Hillary Rodham: "what difference at this point does it make" whether it's 2 hrs or 8 hrs or 24 hrs or 96 hrs between picking and the hopping?

Sure, if you're a nano brewery that's very cool to have it be that quick, but anyone with scale enough to be distributed, not to mention distributed nationwide, is going to have the hops sitting in a truck/bin/silo/whatever. Obviously the entire batch of Celebration is not all brewed at once, nor could they possibly coordinate that much harvesting and transportation to coordinate perfectly with a beer being ready.


Thread does make me want to go to OR/WA at this time of year to actually taste an "actual"/2hr wet hop beer, at some point in my life.

 

Redefine? That's sort of my whole point: before SN added Fresh Hop Ale to the label of Celebration, no modern breweries were calling beers using newly kilned hops "fresh". Yes, I know Jess posted those ancient texts that showed many years ago brewers had used those terms, but in the modern state of craft beer it was pretty universally understood that fresh/wet meant freshly picked from the bine and into wort within 24 hours. I seem to recall lots of confusion here on BA when they first did this, and would love it if those threads had been archived.

Let's look at some of the older examples of fresh hop beer: Great Divide's Fresh Hop Pale and Deschute's Hop Trip, both dating back to at least 2005 (and IIRC before SN added Fresh Hop Ale to the Celebration label) and both make references to freshly picked and into the brew kettle within 24 hours. Specifically:

Hop Trip (from the first label in 2005) - Fresh Hop Pale Ale is all about celebrating the hop harvest in the fall. Fresh picked hops have to be added to the brew immediately, so one brewer starts the brew in Bend, while another rushes the hops three hours back from the Williamette Valley. The result? Let's just say it was worth the drive.

Great Divide Fresh Hop Pale Ale (also from the 2005 label) - Fresh Hop Pale Ale is brewed with fresh, whole cone hops from the Pacific Northwest. We ship these "wet" hops to Denver overnight and brew shortly after harvest, imparting an intensely grassy hop aroma and citrus hop flavor in a medium-bodied pale ale.

So like I said, up until more recently, when you said Fresh Hop Ale to a beer geek it meant the brew had freshly picked unkilned hops in it. That's the redefinition.

 

Once picked, hops rapidly degrade and need to be either used fresh or dried as soon as possible. Almost everyone cites using them within 24 hours. It isn't a matter of simply being "cool".

These beers honestly do have a different taste to them, and it's fun to drink something like Larelwood's Workhorse IPA and then try the fresh hopped version of it (which for my money is a way better beer). Back in the day most breweries would have specific recipes for fresh hop ales, but now many are starting to offer fresh hop versions of their standard lineup and it's leading to some fantastic stuff.

 

I can't address most of this as I have absolutely no documentation about when SN first described one of their beers as "Fresh Hop." That's one of the problems with the web, it is pretty malleable.

But notice also that nothing I'm referrring to or talking about has anything whatsoever to do with the quality or enjoyability of the flavor, etc. as that is a highly personal judgement. Rather my focus and question is about on the use of the word "Fresh" and nothing more.

Also notice that I'm talking primarily about the generic usage of "Fresh" regardless of whether it is used by brewers or otherwise. In dealing with produce "Fresh" is differentiated from "Fresh Picked" so again why should beer and hops be singled out for re-redefiniton of the term "Fresh" from the way in which many use it?

Edit: Especially since most of what you say about it is quite true for other agricultural products as well where "Fresh" is different than "Fresh picked."

 

As I pointed out in another post, every market and supermarket around here has a fresh produce section labeled so to distinguish it from the canned goods. ( I'll bet that yours do to.) It includes fruits and vegetables shipped in from a variety of locations, many pre-processed to preserve freshness until purchase. However, in certain seasons of the year there will be a special stand set up within the fresh produce section of serveral such stores, featuring "freshly picked produce" from local near by sources. E.g., At least twice in the last month I have purchased corn on the cob that was labeled as being "Freshly Picked from X, which is actually a farm within driving distance where I could also drive to pick up some at their produce stand where they advertise "farm fresh produce recently picked from our fields." Similarly if I chose to do so I could drive over the river and get the fresh picked tomatos at a stand where they stress that the tomatoes are picked fresh from the fields. They don't just say "Fresh produce" they emphasize that it is freshly picked.

Notice that any supermarket or produce market advertising fresh produce will be stocking things from FL, CA, WA, etc. that they do not say is fresh picked, just that it is fresh.

You are absolutely correct that because of the interstate system and Reefer trucks we can have fresh produce from many places year round. But the even though the term "fresh" has indeed involved it is still applied to that produce with a differentiating term to distinguish that produce from seasonally fresh produce picked and being sold as fresh picked.

 

I can't off the top of my head think of another brewer who uses the term in this way, but I also can't think of another brewer who has built a 30+ year-old specialty IPA that strictly features these fresh hops (and would bother with that expense.) Chicken or the egg...

We called it that, ("fresh") based on the older common-usage term used to describe beers (as @jesskidden pointed out) and moreover, we were making "wet hopped beers" (and calling them that, too) before most hop growers were equipped to handle doing so (and many thought we were nuts.) Prior to that, most hop growers, referring to un-dried hops, used terms like "Raw" or "Green" or "Wet."

My tongue-in-cheek comment about the pedantic argument and accuracy has a kernel of truth to it, but at this point in the thread there seems to be several different topics at hand.

Let me recap for those in the back.Please correct me if I'm off base here.

Facts:

1. There are hops that are used un-dried, straight off the bine: (we say "wet" others use "green" "raw" or "fresh.") These hops are perishable and can't survive unused more than a few days maximum.
   
2. Hops lose flavor, Alpha Acid, and aroma over time. They are at their "freshest" (most flavorful) directly after harvest.
3. In the Northern Hemisphere there is one hop harvest per year...Roughly late August through Late October.

Argument:

1. Sierra Nevada says "wet" to represent un-dried hops, others (maybe most) brewers use the term "fresh" to mean the same thing, but this was not always the case.
   
2. Sierra Nevada feels there should be a word to denote dried hops at the peak of their flavor before time and oxidation has diminished them. We chose "fresh" as opposed to stale. We acknowledge there are few, if any, (modern) brewers using this term, but that does not make it inaccurate: see above.
   
3. Sierra Nevada thinks the term "fresh" in regard to un-dried hops is redundant, because un-fresh and un-dried hops are compost and unusable for the purposes of brewing.
   
4. Some folks take umbrage to our use of the word "fresh" in regards to the first dried hops of the growing season because they see it as misleading or out of the norm due to the simultaneous use of the word by others to describe un-dried hops.

Resolution:

1. Sierra Nevada chooses a different word to denote the first fresh hops of the growing season (We're all ears if you think you have one that might be clearer... but it had better be good.)
2. Other brewers and hop growers form a joint subcommittee to all adopt one common vocabulary to describe un-dried hops (probably won't be "fresh" if you get a bunch of engineers and agronomists in the same room, BTW...)
3. We all forget about the damn semantics and go back to enjoying hoppy beers for what they are.

Personally, I vote option 3 in the resolution camp. Wet, fresh, green, whatever term you use it's all saying one thing: It's autumn and the new hop crop is upon us. Let's open a beer already!

 

I don't care much about the terminology but I've been hoping to arrange a PNW trip around harvest season for years (and failing, alas) just to sample the region's ridiculous multitude of fresh-hopped brews.

Next year, hopefully.

 

This thread inspired me to pick some up as well and I too am digging this year's batch a lot.

 

Reminds me of a saying my first boss and mentor had, "If you want twelve expert opinions just get ten of them in a room because they all have different opinions and before it's over two will change their minds".

I do have what I hope is a constructive thought. For relatively unbiased opinions SN sets up a panel of field testers whose only qualification is they have at least 50 years of beer drinking experience. I will volunteer, gratis of course, all you have to do is ship me some beer.

 

You've got a deal!