Fresh-Hop Beers Are Coming … in Cans
Via Tracy Taylor Thomas/Twitter
They are here.
I don’t mean the Abominable ales particularly—but fresh hop beers. Late August is the usual time the first dry-hopped fresh-hopped beers hit the market and when I start seeing social media posts announcing discoveries by drinkers as they encounter them in pubs around town. But that’s just the thing: in pubs. This year far fewer pubs are open, and breweries have shifted most of their production to package. That means many have made a calculated risk: they are guessing the quickest way to get those most-perishable of beers to customers isn’t across a bar, but in a can.
Evanescence
Two things are notable about fresh-hop beers. First is their unique character. These beers are made by taking hop cones just removed from their bines and getting them into beer within minutes or hours—as soon as possible. Most hops go from the plucker immediately to drying kilns the size of football fields. The kilns gently drive the moisture from the plant, leaving it preserved—but changed. Much like the difference between fresh and dried basil, fresh hops express different flavors and aromas than their conventional counterparts. It’s not just that a grapefruit note might come across as more lemony—though that happens, too—but rather that the very character changes, like a different herb has been used. Fresh hops have an unmistakable quality evident whether the hop is Citra or Spalt that comes from the freshness rather than the oils or terpenes.
The second essential quality of fresh hops is their evanescence. That fresh-hop flavor does not last. Brewers get maybe a month, and that is just the period in which their character can be perceived at all. Within that period is a much smaller window in which the fresh hops pop, and that lasts maybe a week. During that brief window (call it peak fresh hop, or PFH), beers made with fresh hops have a quality unlike anything else in the beer world. It is amazing, joyful, and intense, like the moment of ripeness for a good Oregon strawberry or peach.
Canned Fresh
I once believed it wasn’t possible to package a fresh-hop beer that would deliver PFH. One year I tasted fresh-hop Mirror Pond at the brewery (tremendous), and when I got home I found a bottle of the same beer delivered directly to my house. It was not tremendous.
Fresh-hop beers, once they’re outside the window, are often pallid affairs. It’s as if there’s a hole in the profile where something important once resided. Sometimes the fresh hops even leave behind a curious vegetal note, as if the beer had been conditioned on leaves. (Also not tremendous.)
Six years ago, a bottle of Lagunitas challenged my beliefs. It arrived via overnight mail and I quickly chilled and drank it. And lo!, it contained all the oomph of peak fresh hops. I have no idea what happened to that beer in the days afterward. Presumably it went through the same quick life-cycle. It’s why until this year I haven’t bothered to drink fresh-hop beers in cans. What’s the point, when I can walk into any pub and find five of them pouring?
Many more fresh-hop beers will go into package than ever before, and because of that, 2020 is going to offer a fascinating real-time experiment. Brewers know what I know. They understand how hard it is to keep fresh-hop beers fresh, and they will be brewing to maximize longevity. Some of their beers will perform better than others through a combination of volume, variety, and process. They will use their experience and wiles to maximize flavor preservation. And, by late October, they’re going to have quite a dataset on what worked and didn’t work.
It’s exciting because if they do discover ways to lock in that fresh-hop flavor, it means we’ll be able to enjoy the beers outside the serendipity of timing at a pub. It will mean for once people outside the Northwest night have a chance to experience PFH and recognize it, something that takes time, even when one is sampling a great example. (Like any flavor in beer, it takes a while to separate from other flavors, but once you do, it’s unmistakable.)
I will revisit this question in a couple of months, canvassing brewers to find out what they learned. And of course, I’ll pass that along. You can help by bird-dogging good examples you find and letting me know. More soon—