October in Washington brings juicy plums, the smell of boiling Dungeness crab, and pumpkin spice lattes. But for beer drinkers, October means wet hop beers. One of the most seasonally specific styles that a brewery can make, wet-hop (or fresh-hop) beers are brewed with just-harvested whole-cone hops rushed from farms to brew kettles to capture the most vibrant flavors and aromas of these pungent flowers before they begin to fade. This limits the brewing period to the very short hops harvest season every September, with the bounty arriving now, at least this year. Today, Peaks and Pints presents another round of new wet hop beers to our cooler, and thus a good reason to offer a flight of them, too. Enjoy Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Tuesday Fresh Hops 9.24.24.

Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Tuesday Fresh Hops 9.24.24

Matchless Easy Being Green

5.2% ABV

Matchless Brewing’s Easy Being Green fresh hop hazy IPA accepts half a ton of fresh Cascade hops from CLS Farms on top of Azacca and Chinook hops for flavors of watermelon and green tea and aromas of a green garden with a touch of honeydew melon.

Ilk Dripping Wet Hops

5.3% ABV

This is a 100-percent wet hop IPA brewed by Ilk Beer in downtown Olympia. No pellets, no extract, no fresh kiln or frozen wet hops, just total wet hops. Ilk added wet Perrault Farms Sabro in the mash then wet Roy Farms Strata and Perrault Simcoe in the hop back followed by wet, that day picked, Loftus Ranches Citra in the dry hop. There is Malt in this beer too, LINC Pils and flaked wheat; but that’s not wet hop, it’s just here to make this a beer.

Breakside Fresh Hop IPA – Mosaic

6.7% ABV

“It’s fresh hop season! screams Breakside Brewery. “Once a year, we pick up hops directly from the farm. These un-dried ‘wet hops’ impart unique green, pungent aromas to the beer that can’t be had the rest of the year. In order to extract as much fresh flavor from each hop as possible, we employ our signature ‘hop shattering’ method using liquid nitrogen to freeze the fresh hops and break them apart, thus exposing the coveted lupulin glands that are packed full of hop flavor and aroma. cheers!” Breakside’s Fresh Hop IPA – Mosaic is brewed with fresh Mosaic hops from Coleman Agriculture for notes of evergreen and tropical fruit plus balanced bitterness.

Breakside Fresh Wanderlust – Cascade

6.2% ABV

Back in the day, Breakside Brewery’s original, awarding-winning IPA sold so well in Oregon the Portland brewery couldn’t expand its brewery’s sales to remote places like, oh, Seattle. So, it decided to make another IPA intended for export to lands near and far, Wanderlust. Made with Mosaic, Summit, Simcoe, Cascade, and Amarillo hops, it is bright golden in color and has intense tropical, dank, and grapefruit notes. By keeping the malt profile as light as possible, the interplay of hop flavors shine — especially when they add fresh Cascade hops. Breakside Brewery’s Fresh Wanderlust – Cascade grabbed first place at the 2017 Seattle Fresh Hop Throwdown and Gold at the 2018 Oregon Beer Awards. This year,

Logan Sea of Leaves

6.5% ABV

Logan Brewing’s fresh hop IPA brewed with fresh Amarillo hops from Crosby Hop Farm for fresh flavors of orange, mango, peach, and grassy pine.

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory