Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow: Why You Need to Drink Wet-Hopped Beer Right Now

There's one kind of beer you need to drink this fall, and it's not an Oktoberfest lager. Here's why you need wet-hopped beers in your life.
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Fort George Brewery

Welcome to Foaming at the Mouth, Joshua M. Bernstein’s hopped-up adventures in the ever-expanding universe of beer. And yes, he would like another round, please.

As a hops-crazed beer lover, I froth like a rabid dog in the fall.

Sure, Oktoberfest-friendly lagers are fab. And pumpkin beers also have a home in my stomach. But come September and October, I wear blinders for most every beer style save one: wet-hopped beer, the fleeting embodiment of the season. Consider it the beer-world equivalent of Beaujolais nouveau, a young and fresh fall drink, best enjoyed while the leaves are still turning.

Allow me to explain. In late August and early September, hop farmers are on high alert. Whenever hops—the fragrant flowering cones that supply beer with bitterness, flavor, and aroma—reach fully fragrant maturity, farmers and field hands leap into action. They become perpetual-motion machines hurrying to harvest the plants at peak ripeness.

Typically, plump, resinous hops are dispatched to a kiln and dried. That’s because their flavors and aromas rapidly fade, much like just-cut grass. If you’ve ever mowed a lawn, you’ll recognize that fresh, green scent, the chlorophyll unleashed. You’ll also note that cut grass quickly decomposes, a rotten fate that hops similarly can’t escape. “After the hops are picked, you only have 24 hours before they start turning into compost,” says Chris Nemlowill, co-owner of Astoria, Oregon’s Fort George Brewery.

Beating a ticking clock is tricky. Though he received a rough harvest timeline for his hop farmer this season, Nemlowill essentially had to shut down half the brewery for a week. And wait. And wait. When the call came, he hopped in a 16-foot truck and drove four-plus hours east to Yakima, Washington’s B.T. Loftus Ranches. He filled the truck with 2,200 pounds of Simcoe hops and returned to Astoria, arriving around midnight. By 5 a.m., the brewers were at work. They didn’t stop brewing for more than a day.

Sure, the process is a pain in the butt. But the payoff is that “you’re getting the true hop flavor,” Nemlowill says of the piney, earthy, and aptly named Fresh IPA.

The Fresh IPA.

Unlike the highly bittered pale ales and IPAs that characterize modern American brewing, wet-hop beers are mellow, delicate, and freshly vibrant, the volume only cranked halfway to 11. The difference, says Sierra Nevada brewmaster Steve Dresler, is like using fresh herbs instead of dried herbs. “If I go to my garden and pull off fresh oregano for my pasta sauce, that’s a wet hop,” he says, noting that dried herbs have a more concentrated flavor.

Hops are no different. With wet-hop ales, “you’re going to be drinking a plant that was just alive,” says Blue Mountain Brewery co-owner Taylor Smack. Based in rural Afton, Virginia, the brewery runs several hop fields, enlisting area beer fans to help reap the crops. After each harvest, the first 150 pounds are used to make a celebratory beer, which is served at the brewery. “It tastes like you’re sucking on something green,” Smack says. “There’s no better way to bring the agricultural nature of beer back to people.”

Today, wet-hop beers are brewed everywhere from England to Australia to California. But it was first embraced by Sierra Nevada in 1996. Following a conversation with hop merchant Gerard Lemmens, who suggested that brewing with freshly picked hops would give a beer more aroma, Dresler decided to brew a wet-hop ale. Problem was, he had no idea how many hops to use. After soliciting advice from Dr. Greg Lewis, one of America's preeminent hop experts, Dresler opted to use about six or seven times the standard amount of dry hops. (Today his ratio is nearly ten to one.) The result was the bright Harvest Ale, which smells like a romp through a freshly mown lawn sprinkled with citrus. (The beer is now known as Harvest Wet Hop IPA.)

With the success of Harvest Ale the wet-hop movement was officially afoot, with much of it centered in the Pacific Northwest. That’s because Oregon, eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, and Idaho contain the majority of the American hop crop. Brewers can drive to local farms on their lunch break and be home by dinnertime. Embracing proximity, Bend's Deschutes does Hop Trip, Portland's Hopworks releases a range of wet-hopped beers, and Hood River's Full Sail makes Fresh Hop Pale Ale. (Breweries also call these harvest beers “fresh hop,” though that designation also encompass beers made with recently dried hops, such as Sierra Nevada’s Celebration and Harvest Fresh Hop IPA.)

While making wet-hop beers may be a breeze for Washington’s Bale Breaker—the brewery is headquartered inside a hop farm—geography does not limit determined brewers. Denver’s Great Divide sends a truck from the Pacific Northwest to ferry the goods for its Fresh Hop Pale Ale, and Brooklyn-based Sixpoint expedites Washington hops for Sensi Harvest. Elsewhere, breweries are relying on their own states’ burgeoning hop-growing industries. Awash with indigenous agriculture, Michigan’s North Peak makes Hoodoo Midwest Wet Hop IPA, Colorado’s Left Hand cranks out Warrior IPA, and, in Massachusetts, Jack’s Abby does Mom & Pop’s Wet Hop Lager—featuring hops grown by the founders’ parents.

With the harvest wrapped up, expect to find wet-hopped beers on store shelves and tap lines any minute. When you spot one, don’t dawdle. “They should be purchased and consumed with a sense of urgency,” Dresler says. “Find them as soon as you can and consume them as soon as you can.”

Mission accepted. Now that wet-hopped beer is here, there’s no way I’m drying out till November.