Partisans Debate Fresh Hops: Hot or Cold Side?

The first brewer I spoke to this year about fresh hop beers announced, right at the outset, his position. I just sent off an article about our regional, seasonal delights to Craft Beer & Brewing, and while researching it discovered what appears to be a growing, and heated, rivalry. The next two brewers I contacted immediately announced their opinion on the matter, unbidden, as well (one was team cold-side, the other hot-side).

Remember, on Fri-Sat Sept 27-28, you’ll have 50+ fresh hop beers to sample at the Rose City Fresh Hops Fest. Early tickets and more information available here. Also, if you’d like to volunteer and receive free entry one of the sessions, please do so here.

The issue is hardly new. Four years ago in these pages Zach Beckwith, then-brewer at Bend Brewing, offered what amounted to a manifesto: “To me, the magic of a well executed fresh hop beer … is [one] 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.” In the years since, the debate has intensified, and cold-siders are no less opinionated. When I visited Great Notion recently, Rob McCoy told me why he disdained the hot-side method: “You’re essentially putting boiling wort over your hops and stripping everything from them.”

The difference, in case anyone’s scratching their head, depends on when breweries add the fresh-from-the-field, undried hops. Some dump their cones in during the end of the boil or, more commonly, after the boil, in modified hop backs. This steeps the hops like tea in sub-boiling wort—temperature preferences vary—and is said to extract more of the good stuff. Others add them to finished beer waiting in conditioning tanks, free of that dangerous heat. The relative coolness of the liquid, partisans of the method agree, preserves the good stuff.

I think it’s about time to address this issue head-on. Who’s right?

The arguments for both approaches make sense. Proponents of hot-side use believe the flavors and aromas that result are more intense, deeper, and long-lasting. Cold-siders counter that the aromatics are more intense and brighter if they’re dry-hopped. But tellingly, both seem to agree that the hops express themselves differently. If you want that very plant-like, chlorophyll-rich kind of experience, one that seems to add a chalky texture to the beer, go hot side. If you’re looking for more complex and intense aromatics without a gale-force “greenness,” cold side is the way.

I will offer a heterodox counterpoint and say that, from the consumer perspective, I’m not sure it’s that obvious. I was speaking with Tom Shellhammer, Professor of Food Science at Oregon State University and a major hops researcher, if he knew what that “green” flavor in fresh hops was. He’s an Oregonian and has done plenty of informal mouth- and nose-based research, and he knew exactly what I was talking about. He hasn’t verified through his scientific equipment, but he believes there’s a particular chemical involved in this scent, and he named it. (I don’t want to step on my article in Craft Beer & Brewing, so you’ll just have to wait for details.)

Writer Don Tse and Ben Howe (Otherlands) create a great backdrop for my Wayfinder Keller Pils (Mt Hood hops)

I believe that chemical is present in both methods. There’s something that I’m just going to call the “green compound” that comes through in both methods, and it’s what I use to identify whether the beer I’m drinking is fresh hop, or just rich with regular hops. The first beer I tasted this year was Foreland’s Landform Pilsner, which had Goschie Farms Tettnangers in them. It was August, and the harvest was maybe a week old, so these were clearly cold-side hops. The intensity of the scent, which was identical to the scent that wafts from a late-August farm, was unmistakable. Last night, I had a Ruse Spirit Receiver, a hazy with hot-side Stratas, and it was just as distinctive. It was pure Strata, with that savory/strawberry combo, and it was pure fresh as well. The green compound somehow makes a more herbal hop like Tettnangers sing just as purely as it does with a densely tropical or dank hop like Strata. And both methods seem to be able to showase it. Had I tasted these blind, would I have been able to tell which method the brewers used? I could not.

Matters are further compounded by how many hops a brewery uses, which variety they select, how many other hops they use, and how they use them (do they, for example, freeze them with liquid nitrogen first?). Oh, and also how fresh the beer is. Because of these many variables, I’m not sure that the layperson needs to get too deeply into the weeds about how their beer was made. Indeed, when I pressed the brewers on this, they agreed that there were many paths to the top of the fresh hop mountain. Of course, they quickly followed that up by reiterating why their preferred method was, nevertheless, the best.

The moral of this story is that if you see a brewer, ask them how they make their fresh hop beer. Their answer doesn’t matter, but you will be entertained.