[COHO] Wet Hops - From the Wall Street Journal

[Huntkng@aol.com]

Hi Group,
 
Hope you all had a great time at Hop Madness!  Wish I coulda' been  there.
 
The below article was topical because I made my first wet hop brew on  
Friday.  I picked them off a friends hops vines.  Don't know the  variety but they 
smelt and looked fine.  
 
Here ya go:

Fresher Beer, Once a Year
To Toast a New Crop,  Brewers Roll Out 'Wet Hop' Barrel; A Truce in a Bitter 
Battle

By CONOR DOUGHERTY,  The Wall Street Journal
First there was Beaujolais nouveau. Now comes beer  nouveau.
The end of the growing season has been celebrated by  everyone from apple 
growers to winemakers, but lately brewers have started  marking the renewal of 
their own annual cycle, with beers that are brewed with  hops picked only a few 
hours before. Called "fresh hop," "wet hop" or harvest  beers, they begin 
appearing in late September, typically on tap and lasting  only until the kegs run 
dry. 
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Harvest ales started showing up in the last decade or so  in hop-growing 
regions like Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. But  as the style 
catches on and more farmers plant hop yards, the beer is  increasingly found 
outside of its traditional home. Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.  sold its Harvest Ale in 
all 50 states last year, up from five in 2000. Late  next month Dogfish Head 
Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., will release its first  fresh-hop beer, 
Fed-Extra Mild, an English-style ale with two varieties of  hops: one freshly picked 
and shipped overnight from the West Coast, and a  second grown in an 
employee's yard. And while the majority of wet-hop beers  are poured from tap handles, 
some brewers are now bottling it. Denver's Great  Divide Brewing Co. started 
bottling its Fresh Hop Pale Ale three years ago,  and now the brew is 
distributed in seven states including Texas, Florida and  Massachusetts. 
'Liquid Poem' to Hops 
The season's first hops are also cause for festival-style  celebration. At 
O'Brien's Wet Hop Beer Festival held at San Diego's O'Brien's  Pub, bar owner 
Tom Nickel plans to serve 35 beers this year, double the number  at the 
inaugural event two years ago. (New names at last year's festival  included Hop Trip 
from Deschutes brewery of Bend, Ore., and Last Hop Standing  from Blue Frog 
Grog & Grill in Fairfield, Calif.) While so-called craft  brewers are leading the 
trend, industry giants have also taken notice: Last  year an Anheuser-Busch 
brewery in Fort Collins, Colo., released its Front  Range Fresh Harvest Hop Ale 
for festivals and at Anheuser-Busch tour  centers. 
These beers are the latest expression of brewers'  obsession with hops, the 
sticky green cone of the Humulus lupulus plant that  gives beer its bitter 
flavor. Classically, beer has four main ingredients --  the others are water, 
yeast and grain, typically barley. Before hops, brewers  had balanced the sweet 
taste of malted barley with herbs including yarrow,  coriander and ginger. 
Around 900 years ago they began adding hops, which  imparted flavor and also served 
as a preservative. 
Much more recently, hops became a rallying point for U.S.  craft-brewers -- a 
movement that took off in the 1980s as a reaction to the  big-brewery beers 
that critics dismissed as too light, too watery, and too  stingy on the hops. 
Bitter became better for a subset of craft-brew drinkers,  many of whom tend to 
measure a beer's worth in proportion to its hoppiness.  The measuring stick 
is the International Bittering Unit, or IBU, with the  biggest beers logging in 
at 100 plus IBUs. Mainstream brews from  Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors are 
typically around 10 or 20 IBUs. 
The hop infatuation has resulted in a game of chicken  among brewers, who 
have continued their effort to out-bitter the next guy --  as evidenced by beer 
labels that boast mixed hops, extra hops or triple hops.  Stone Brewing Co. in 
Escondido, Calif., calls its Stone Ruination India Pale  Ale "a liquid poem to 
the glory of the hop!" Delaware's Dogfish Head has  pioneered a pair of 
hop-enhancing technologies, including a "continuous  hopping machine" that adds 
hops gradually over up to two hours of brewing  instead of throwing some in at 
the beginning, middle and end, as is customary.  The brewery also invented a 
method for delivering a final hoppy hit to kegged  beer by running it through a 
hop-stuffed chamber before it hits the pint  glass. Dogfish Head calls the 
device Randall the Enamel Animal, and some bars  and beer stores have also started 
serving "Randalled" beers. 
But for a few months in the fall, brewers stop worrying  about more hops and 
focus instead on fresh hops. When first plucked from its  stalk, a hop flower 
is green and about 60 percent water by weight. For brewing  purposes, hops are 
usually dried and refrigerated, or made into pellets that  resemble rabbit 
food. Wet-hop beers use flowers that have been picked just  hours before, so 
they still possess the volatile flavors that are lost during  processing. Brewers 
compare beer made with these moist hops to a meal cooked  with just-picked 
herbs -- entirely unlike one made with dried oregano and  parsley from the back 
of the pantry. 
A fresh-hop beer can often, in fact, be less bitter than  a corresponding 
version with dried hops, and instead is powered by floral,  citrus tastes. The 
retained oils line the inside of the mouth and have a tinge  of greenish, 
vegetal flavors. (Many brewers recommend drinking their wet hops  with a glass of 
water.) It's easy to taste the difference between a normal  brew and a fresh-hop 
version -- though that isn't always a good thing. "If  you're not careful you 
can end up with a beer that tastes like lawn  clippings," says Garrett 
Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. 
Fugglerama #2 
Brewing, of course, has a long tradition of following the  seasons. Before 
refrigeration, beermakers were eager to get their hands on the  first hops of 
the season. They tended to make beers in the fall that  highlighted them, before 
switching to maltier beers as stored hops lost their  character. (Germany's 
Oktoberfest is a slightly different story: The two-week  festival now marks the 
fall with copious amounts of beer, but got its start as  a wedding 
celebration.) 
Randy Mosher, a beer author and instructor at Siebel  Institute of 
Technology, a Chicago brewing school, says there's little  historical precedent for 
using hops within a few hours of picking. "What  people are trying to do with 
craft beer is put people in touch with their food  again, and remind them that 
they're drinking an agricultural product," he  says. 
Fresh-hop beers started popping up about a decade ago  when Sierra Nevada 
brewed its first Harvest Ale. The style attracted other  brewers, and there are 
now several dozen versions available. Sierra now makes  three wet hop beers, 
including one using "estate grown hops," while Steelhead  Brewing Co. in Eugene, 
Ore., last year made a pair of fresh-hops, "Fugglerama  #1" and "Fugglerama 
#2," with two varieties of Fuggle hops. There's even a  nascent movement among 
brewers to grow their own: Today in Kearney, Neb.,  Trevor Schaben, owner of 
Thunderhead Brewing, plans on heading out to a hops  field 10 miles from his 
brewpub to pick with a handful of customers (it's the  brewpub's second attempt 
at a wet hop). 
Though wet-hop beers inspire brewers' creative fancies,  they also pose a 
logistical challenge. Many breweries are set up to use pellet  hops, which are 
much easier to filter out than the leftover plant matter from  wet hops. A wet 
hop requires a special filter or trapping system to keep the  debris out of the 
finished product. 
But the bigger problem is getting the hops in the mix  before they've 
spoiled. Victory Brewing Co. contracts a refrigerated truck to  collect hops from a 
grower in upstate to New York then drive straight back to  the brewery in 
Downingtown, Pa. Come fall Russian River Brewing  owner/brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo 
gathers about a dozen friends and family  members to pick hops on a quarter 
acre plot a few miles from his brewery in  Santa Rosa, Calif. As they pick he 
begins brewing, then throws in the hops as  they arrive from the field. Sierra 
Nevada uses two varieties -- Centennial and  Cascade -- that have different 
picking periods that overlap for a day or so.  The brewery sends a truck to 
collect the last of the Cascade harvest, then to  another field to collect the first 
of the Centennials, then back to the  brewery in Chico, Calif. "I never know 
what day it's going to be," says  brewmaster Steve Dresler.


 
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