First Fresh Hop of the Season
My mom is in town this week with a couple friends, and last night I took the gang to Deschutes. It was, when we arrived, a glorious 80-degree evening and put was suffused with golden light. I was trying to give them a good Portlandy-beery sense of the city, and all the uncontrollable factors were really working with me. And that was before I saw they had Fresh Hop Mirror Pond on tap.
That beer is just spectacular--and also a case study in the evanescence of the genre. Deschutes bottles FHMP, and it's a pleasant beer by the time you get it home from the grocery store and finally pull it out of your fridge. A bit more delicate than regular Mirror Pond, maybe, but not a lot different. On tap, spanking fresh at the pub, though, and it's a revelation. The beer is nothing but Cascades, so all the aromas that seem unCascadey--mint and hay, a touch of licorice?, lemon--come from the freshness. Based on the unctuous decadence of the body it feels (not tastes, feels) like the beer is swimming in hop oils. A mental image pops into mind of a kettle of beer so choked with hops it's green as a pool of absinthe.
The funny thing is, I'm not a huge fresh hop fan--not like some people. But I gotta tell you, done right, there's almost nothing as rare and wonderful as a just-picked, fresh-from-the-tap, wet hop beer. You can taste the life.
Incidentally, the Hops Fest out in Hood River is about ten days away (9/29), and by the looks of the taplist, it's going to be good. More on that soon--but put it on your calendars. It's one of the good ones.
The funny thing is, I'm not a huge fresh hop fan--not like some people. But I gotta tell you, done right, there's almost nothing as rare and wonderful as a just-picked, fresh-from-the-tap, wet hop beer. You can taste the life.
Incidentally, the Hops Fest out in Hood River is about ten days away (9/29), and by the looks of the taplist, it's going to be good. More on that soon--but put it on your calendars. It's one of the good ones.