Fresh Hop Frenzy
A visit to the nation's hop capital, the return of Pastrytown, and a faceful of Citra
I’m sitting in an overly-hip hotel lobby in Seattle, Washington, sipping a Fremont Lush IPA and longing for another taste of the boatload of fresh hop beers I had on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. I made a long-awaited trip to Yakima, Washington over the weekend. What made Yakima, a rather quiet desert town of about 90,000 people, a bucket-list destination for me? Hops. The Yakima River Valley, which runs south and east from the town, is home to about three-quarters of all the hops grown in the United States. And in September, it’s abuzz with hop-seekers and IPA drinkers.
Brewers that contract with hop-growing concerns fly into town for hop selection each year, visiting the farms where the hops grow, the plants where hops are processed, and often the local breweries where some of these hops are featured in beers that were brewed with hops straight from the farm. These brews require a bit of logistical work, since fresh hops will tend to rot if they’re not used within 24 hours. They also require more hops, since they’re not concentrated like the processed hop pellets that most brewers use. And the finished product, most commonly in the form of a Fresh Hop IPA, tends to have a much “greener” flavor and aroma than traditional IPAs.
With many breweries in the Pacific Northwest being a quick drive from these hop farms, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho boast a ton of Fresh Hop IPAs this time of year. And while I’ve seen a whole bunch here in Seattle, Yakima was other-worldly. Bale Breaker Brewing Company, which sits on a family hop farm on the edge of town, offered no less than four different fresh-hop beers, including Citra Slicker, which was my first beer of the trip. In downtown Yakima, Single Hill Brewing had six fresh hop beers on tap, along with three different IPAs using experimental hops grown on local farms that may become the next big thing in craft brewing. I had to go back there a second time just to give more of those a try. And thankfully, Bale Breaker has a new satellite location in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, so I got to try the fresh hop beers I missed in Yakima before I headed back home to New York.
Reminder: Blocktoberfest is this Saturday
In case you skipped an edition of the newsletter here or there, or if your plans for this Saturday fell through, the New York City Brewers Guild’s first in-person event in twenty months, Blocktoberfest, is this Saturday at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Tickets are still available for the event, which will feature beer from over thirty breweries in every New York borough. The venue is new this year: it’s behind Building 77 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, accessible from Flushing Avenue and from the NYC Ferry, which makes stops on the Upper East Side, Astoria, Roosevelt Island, Long Island City, Kips Bay, and the Financial District on its route that includes the Navy Yard.
Besides beer, there will be a DJ, food options from a whole bunch of local eateries, some shopping pop-ups offering NYC-made products, refurbished bikes, and beer swag, and, I hope, plenty of good vibes.
The event kicks off at noon with a VIP hour, and opens to general admission ticket holders at 1pm. Tickets start at $60, with the VIP hour running you an extra $15.
Other Half’s Pastrytown returns in-person in November
The last major beer event before New York City locked down is finally returning. Pastrytown, Other Half Brewing’s celebration of sweets, sours, and stouts, will be held in-person on Saturday, November 13th in a new location — 588 Baltic in Brooklyn. The last Pastrytown was held on Saturday, March 7th, 2020, just days before the city shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year’s event will be bigger than ever, with more than fifty breweries expected to be pouring alongside bakeries and food trucks. The wrestling that was part of past Other Half festivals will be back, too.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10am through the Oznr App and start at $100. More pricey options include early access and barrel-aged bottles released exclusively for the event.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,394
New breweries in 2021: 320
Breweries visited in Washington: 139
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2379, Cowiche Creek Brewing Company, Cowiche, Washington (Visited 25-Sep-2021)
There are breweries that don’t look like much where you go pretty much solely for the beer. At Cowiche Creek, you go for the beer, but stay for the view. The brewery and its sprawling lawn are on the hilltop property of its owners, the Nordberg family, who are third-generation farmers and decided to get into hop growing — and naturally, beer brewing, too. They’ve been doing that commercially since 2016, adding to a Yakima-area beer scene that was only slowly emerging despite its wealth of hops. I enjoyed the GROWN4U, their fresh hop IPA they had released the day prior to our visit, and the Tiny Dog, their session IPA, was bursting with flavor for a delicate, 4.2% ABV brew.
Hops are grown right on the property, mere yards from their 20-barrel brewhouse in a small building that is dwarfed by a lawn that was practically born for social distancing. They call the space “The Home 40,” which is farmer slang for the 40-acre parcel a farmhouse sits on. Between its hop trellises and its surroundings, Cowiche Creek is the quintessential farm brewery.
By the way, this visit wouldn’t have been possible if not for the wonderful Little Hopper, the brew bus in Yakima that offers several routes both around and outside of town. Harvey the Flyin’ Hawaiian, our driver, was kind, energetic, a great storyteller, and made for a truly memorable day as we stopped off at three breweries on the west side of town. He also was fascinated by my beer-inspired travels and peppered me with questions about it all day long. I always enjoy jogging my memory to tell stories of brewery visits past, and I’m glad I have a new story to tell after this trip.
Social Post of the Week
Speaking of Fresh Hop Ales…
Beer of the Week
Citra Slicker
Bale Breaker Brewing Company (Yakima, Washington) in collaboration with Cloudburst Brewing (Seattle, Washington)
Wet Hop IPA
6.2% ABV
I’m not going to say that my trip to Yakima was a waste by any stretch of the imagination, but the first beer I had there was still my favorite three days later. Citra Slicker is an annual release that Bale Breaker has been brewing since 2014. That year, they collaborated with Dick Cantwell of Elysian Brewing, back when Cantwell was still at Elysian and Elysian was still independent (he left the brewery in 2015 when it was acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev). These days, this annual beer is brewed to celebrate the harvest with a newer but equally-worthy brewery in Seattle, Cloudburst. While its appearance resembles that of a palate-wrecking West Coast IPA, it’s remarkably smooth and delicate. There’s plenty of grapefruit and orange rind aroma and flavor you’d come to expect in a beer with Citra hops, but I got a lot of fresh-cut grass and papaya, too. It was truly a delight from first sip to last.
On my last night of this trip, back in Seattle, I ended up by pure chance sitting with Kevin Smith and Kevin Quinn, the brewers at Bale Breaker, and I tried to play off the fact that I was a fanboy. It was hard to keep my cool. They’ve got a taproom in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood now (in collaboration with Yonder Cider, another producer of alcoholic beverages that reaps the benefits of the fall harvest), so it’s easier than ever to get your hands on their freshest of fresh hop beers during this time of year.
Long Read of the Week
At Gothamist, Caroline Lewis has the scoop on the new program launched by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health that helps people who work in the nightlife industry get access to mental health services. Given that the industry seems to breed issues around stress, depression, and substance abuse, this is a welcome effort if it’s well-executed.
One More Thing
Gosh. This trip to Washington was such a great one, so I really want to thank a whole bunch of people who helped make it happen one way or another: Heather at Hopsteiner who inspired this trip in the first place and came along on the crawl, her co-workers, along with folks from Kansas’ Free State and Central Standard Brewing who were great company Friday night, the aforementioned Harvey, my old friend Seth who somehow managed to take me to eight breweries on Sunday and tolerated it, and David, who’s running that outstanding new Bale Breaker/Yonder taproom in Ballard.
Here’s to more travels soon, but now, time to catch up on some lost sleep.
Cheers,
Chris
Honor to have met Chris. Fascinating journey and writer!