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Grün/Green/Wet Hop

Posted by Nick B. on 2017-09-25 01:46:39

Just to barge in on this...it's green hop time in Kent right now, coincidentally. There was a tent at the Canterbury Food & Drink fest this weekend with a couple dozen green hop beers. I tried quite a few of them.

Meh.

Suffice to say, I've never really gotten much out of green-hop English beer at all, I suppose because there's just something about Goldings & Fuggles which makes them not all that much more aromatic before they're dried. I would simply never guess that any of the ones I've had here have been brewed with green hops.

The first green hop beer I recall having was Sierra Nevada's back around the turn of the millennium. That was brown, and hugely hopped with some citric variety, local to the brewery. That was impressive. It got delivered to Oregon, and I believe pre-dated any of the Oregonian "fresh-hop" beers. (Oregon beer people have decided to call their green-hop beer "fresh-hop", a dopey, confusing situation.)

The few Grünhopfen beers I've had in Franconia have been nice, well-made beers, but again, the relatively milder nature of such fresh Franconian or Bavarian hops might reduce how much of an effect *not* drying them has. Or the brewers simply use *less* hops than Americans do.