Great picture of hops being picked in the wild, but it probably wouldn’t right to copy it over here. Give it a click.
You gotta love a story datelined “Somewhere in Summit County” because the Utah location is a secret. Chris Haas of Desert Edge Brewery knows where the wild hops grow. He allows a Salt Lake City Tribune writer and photographer to come along only “as long as the exact harvesting location wasn’t revealed.”
More hops stuff (perhaps I should start posting these at For the Love of Hops:
– Wadworth & Co.’s Malt & Hops, the first (at least as much as anybody can tell) “green hop” beer, turns 20. Michael Jackson wrote about it in 1993. Sierra Nevada brewmaster Steve Dresler credits hop merchant Gerard Lemmens, who since retired, with telling him about the beer. It inspired Dresler to brew Sierra Nevada’s first fresh hop beer (now called Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale) in 1996. Today I received a press release that said 100 Oregon breweries will make a fresh hop beer (some of them will brew more than one).
– Hop harvest Day 3. At Loftus Ranch in Yakima Valley, that is. “First N. Brewer bales coming off and first Simcoe hitting the cooling room.” Because who can’t use another hop picture? (I swear, pictures of homegrown hops appear in my Facebook timeline every 14 minutes. Not that I’m complaining.)
– Added at 4:45 p.m. (Central time). Green hops are go! Because who can’t use another hop picture? In this case pictures (plural) of wet hops, about to go into the kettle. From Clive Edmed’s hop garden, in fact.
Stan, your going to loooove a post I have coming up…
Never tell your secret spot. 😉
I’m really glad to hear you say Wadsworth was the first. That was the conclusion I drew when I was researching the issue for the wee project I’m working on. The thing that bothers me is this quote, from Jackson, circa 1993, when he went out to Wadsworth to do an article on this funny new technique: “I can think of only one other brewery that has tried making such a ‘biere nouvelle,’ and that is in the far West of the United States.”
I asked the current brewer at Wadsworth, Brian Yorston, if he had any idea which brewery that might have been; he did not. Could it have been Bert Grant? He was early on the scene, but I couldn’t find any published reference to American fresh-hopped ales anywhere near as early as 1992. Unfortunately, we no longer have Bert to dial up and ask. Could be one of those little pieces of history that remains hidden from sight.
I’d say “at least as much as anybody can tell” is a pretty big disclaimer.
In “For the Love of Hops” I make no such claim. Simply say that Sierra Nevada’s was the most influential and that it was first brewed in 1996.
(And include the same quote about “one other brewery.”)
Perhaps Grant did it on an experimental basis earlier, but in the Ale Master he (technically, probably Robert Spector) writes about introducing Fresh Hop Ale in 1997.