Hot-Side Fresh Hops, A Provocation
Sometimes the inbox presents bounties. Bend Brewing’s Zach Beckwith recently sent such a specimen—an email on how to make fresh hops that sits halfway between philosophical treatise and political manifesto. His comments were a response to my post about canned fresh hops from two weeks ago, and he offers thoughts about locking in fresh hop flavor, what causes that vegetal fresh-hop flavor, and even a stray comment on hazy IPAs. Wishy-washy it is not, and therefore it makes for both good reading and an excellent starting point for a larger discussion. So without further throat-clearing, here’s Zach.
I think we could stand to dig a little deeper into fresh-hop beers—specifically into how breweries are utilizing fresh hops. This is now my 11th harvest season, and I’ve brewed probably 40 different fresh-hop beers in that time, so I feel pretty qualified to speak on the topic. As I mentioned before, the race to be first means that most of the fresh-hop beers that are out now are conditioning finished beer on the fresh hops. [Note: Zach wrote me on Sept 2, and now more hot-side beers are out.] The results of this method are entirely different from using fresh hops on the hot side and in my opinion totally inferior (Breakside’s liquid nitrogen technique is a different animal). A frequent knock on fresh-hop beers can be the vegetal flavor which is entirely a product of these cold side fresh-hop beers despite some brewers claiming that it’s the opposite. Think about it: you have cold beer sitting on a bunch of plant material. As we know from traditional dry hopping, you get much better oil/flavor/aroma extraction at warmer temperatures. Breakside has tried to solve the issue by shattering the frozen hops to access the oils inside but if you just stuff a bunch of fresh hops in a sack in a tank and put cold beer on it, you’re not going to extract a whole lot of hop flavor and it will taste more vegetal.
When you talk about the evanescence of fresh hop flavor, think about hazy IPAs and why most are ... not great. Once the initial aroma dissipates you’re not left with enough hop character to carry the beer through, because there typically aren’t any hops used in the kettle. The same idea holds true with fresh-hop beers; if you’re only using them in the “dry hop” stage, that aroma is going to be the first to go and, once it does, it won’t be a complete beer. The fresh hop flavor is lost.
I’ve always utilized fresh hops in a modified hopback scenario (typically repurposing our mash tun and running the wort through the fresh hops before running it through the HEX) to, in my opinion, great results. What you get is more akin to a typical beer where the hop flavor is imbued throughout, not just in the aroma. Think about the preservative quality of hops. When you’re using 10-12 lbs per barrel of fresh hops, like we do, you’re setting that beer up to stay “fresh” for awhile. I’ve never been a fan of the “best before yesterday” messaging with hoppy beers. In our experience, our IPAs typically peak in flavor 3-5 weeks from packaging. The beer needs time for the flavors to come together. With our fresh-hop beers the flavor does seem to evolve more uniquely than a traditional beer but we found that with our packaged fresh-hop beers their peak looks more like a plateau. We tasted some Fresh Trop cans in March that still tasted pretty damn good, 5.5 months from canning. I have evolved from my days as a fresh hop purist where I believed you should only use fresh hops in a fresh hop beer, and our fresh hop beers typically use pellets too to help carry that fresh hop character.
To me, the magic of a well executed fresh hop beer is not necessarily that fleeting “peak fresh hop” flavor (as you put it), but a beer that is completely saturated with hop flavor. I have yet to have a beer with fresh hops on the cold side that reaches that level of saturation.
When I mentioned a standard dogma with fresh hop beers what I was talking about was how they always are talked about in the same way. I’d like to see some deeper discussion on the topic so people know that fresh hop beers are not a monolith but there is a wide range within the “style.”
Consider the discussion started, Zach. All right hive mind, the ball’s in your court.