Double, Double Toil and Trouble
A decade ago, then-small Breakside Brewery made a fresh-hop beer using an outlandish process. They froze the hops, still fresh and 80% water, with liquid nitrogen. This turned them into vitreous emeralds, brittle and ready for smashing under what brewer Ben Edmunds likened to a potato masher. Once broken into shards, the lupulin glands were exposed for easy access to the beer they would soon enter. They’ve continued that process ever since, but until this morning, I’d never actually seen it for myself. [Full disclosure, Breakside is one of the sponsors of this site.]
I am working on a project with Oregon Public Broadcasting, and today I joined them as they filmed a batch of Talus hops get the violent Breakside treatment. I assumed it would be interesting—most things having to do with brewing are—but it was more than that. I hadn’t anticipated how cinematic the whole process would be. My documentation isn’t anything like the video Jeff Kastner shot, which was gorgeous. No worries—you’ll see that eventually. In the meantime you can make do with my trust iPhone shots.
First, the hops arrived, a mere 25-minute drive from the fields. (I think they came from Sodbuster Farms, but my brain is old and full of holes.) We sampled them with our hands and noses. Mangosteen!
In addition to the OPB crew, Anaheim’s Bottle Logic was in town and joined us for the nitro injection. Actually, they joined in the nitro injection, while I stood to the side and gawked. To begin with, the hops go in a bucket where they’re injected with the nitrogen. One person pours, one stirs, and one spins the bucket. At a certain point, they go into a grinder that will do the cracking. Alas, the potato-masher apparatus, however romantic, isn’t as efficient. They seemed to know when the hops were ready, and after watching two or three buckets go out, I asked how. By ear, someone said. I crowded around the next bucket and listened, and sure enough, a squishy sound turned into a sound identical to shattering glass.
As things commenced, I didn’t anticipate the dry-ice effect, which gave the proceedings a cinematic grandeur. In the second picture above, the nitrogen first enters. You can kind of see the hops inside, but within a couple seconds, we had a billowing cloud of mist that crept along the ground and shrouded our activities in what seemed like a pallor of magic.
Next up, the glassy hops go in the grinder for a proper crush and come out looking like green sand. Brewers collect them in bags and put them into a tank. Finished beer goes in on top, and will circulate a few times and by Saturday you should be able to taste the double hazy IPA they went into. I’ll leave you with a short video of the grinding.
Now, get out there and drink some fresh hop beer!