Many brewers will tell you that when it comes to IPAs, the fresher the better.
Though hops are natural preservative thanks to their antimicrobial properties (in fact, early IPAs were brewed to survive long voyages at sea), their vibrant flavors get duller over time — or worse, they turn rancid and off-putting.
It’s somewhat ironic, then, that the hops used to brew the nation’s most coveted IPAs are not fresh at all.
Like any herb, hops quickly go bad once they’re picked off the bine, losing precious oils in as little as 24 hours from harvest. Thus, a majority hops that end up in beer are dried, pulverized and preserved as cones, pellets or extracts, which brewers then use in year-around recipes.
Wet-hop rising
In 1996, Sierra Nevada first made what’s since become a national tradition: beer brewed with “wet” hops, or those that are fresh off the bine and never dried.
Wet-hopped IPAs are less intense than their conventional counterparts, trading potency and bitterness for grassiness and grace.
As the style’s chief architect, Sierra Nevada makes perhaps the most famous example in a beer called Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale, which comes out every September.
