Source: Atlas Obscura
American craft breweries churn out gallons of pumpkin-flavored beers every fall, most of which taste like a “fall magic” Yankee Candle that’s been moldering in a closet since 2005. But there’s another seasonal beer style that appears in the fall that you should be drinking instead: fresh hop.
Fresh hop beer relies on whole hop cones straight from the bine. Most of the time, hops aren’t used in this whole cone state, but are instead turned into little dried pellets that look a bit like pet food. Some versions of fresh hop beers do rely on recently-dried cones, but they’re still extremely fresh. (Some refer to versions made with undried hops as “wet hop ales,” but not all brewers abide by stringent naming rules, so the terms are often used interchangeably.)
While the traditional dried pellets have a shelf life of a year or more, the window to use these fresh ingredients is extremely narrow. If fresh hops aren’t dried, a brewer must use them within 24 hours of harvesting them. Since they start to degrade very quickly, larger…
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