→ Fresh Hop Pilsner
→ 4.2% ABV
→ Crisp, clean, hoppy
→ Colour: light pale
→ 750mL bottle - 2.5 Standard Drinks
Hop harvest only comes once a year, and so it is only once a year that we brewers get a small window (72 hours from picking) to use hops in their freshest, most natural form: straight off the bine! Also called wet hops or green hops, fresh hops are delicious and bring really unique flavors to beer that you can not get from the dried hops that we use the rest of the year.
For our Fresh Hop Flipside, we take our Flipside pilsner (a crisp, clean lager brewed in the classic style of the Czech pilsner but with a touch of Aussie character) and we dry hop it (or more accurately we “wet hop” it) with fresh Enigma hops to bring to the beer a whole new layer of delicate floral aromas and flavors.
Fresh hops are difficult to work with as you are working with the whole undried unprocessed hop flower, meaning that accounting for efficiency and water weight, you need to use about 6x to 10x the amount (by weight) compared to hop pellets. That makes for a lot of vegetal material that can soak up your beer and clog up your pump and drains! Additionally, you only have about 72 hours from picking before they start to go off, and those delicious aromas are replaced with onion and garlic vibes. As picking time comes when the hops are ready, no sooner, no later, and is also a bit touch-and-go… it is a production scheduling nightmare. It is because of these challenges that most breweries don’t bother with them. For us though it is worth it.
Additionally dry-hopping/wet-hopping with fresh hops is a bit controversial as you are basically adding some plants to your finished product along with any dirt, bugs, bacteria etcetera that might be in there. We have a bit of experience doing this now and have never had any issues, so we feel that -provided the beer is drunk fresh - the flavours from dry-hopping are worth the risk of contamination.
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Price includes a $2/bottle deposit. Return your bottles to the brewery to receive credit for future purchases. Learn more here.