Brewed For You Hazy Pale Ale Runs on a Hop Called Anchovie

A beer festival having its own beer is not unusual. A beer festival beer built on a hop called Anchovie is.

Great Lakes Brewery has released Brewed For You Hazy Pale Ale, a 4.6 percent hazy pale ale hopped with Krush and Anchovie, as the official beer of the Brewed For You Craft Beer Fest, now in its third year at the brewery's Etobicoke site. The brewery keeps its own description short, calling the beer juicy and asking, more or less rhetorically, whether this is what a beer festival tastes like.

Anchovie is the part worth explaining. It is an experimental variety grown at Segal Ranch in Washington's Yakima Valley, and it got its name from a pair of Seattle brewers with a sense of humor rather than from anything found in the cone. The hop is described as smelling of watermelon hard candy, raspberry and pine, which is close to the opposite of what the label implies. Great Lakes saw the question coming and answered it in the release email before anyone could ask: no, it does not taste like anchovies.

Krush is the steadier half of the pairing, and familiar ground for this brewery in particular - Great Lakes already sells a New England pale ale named after the hop. Formerly the experimental HBC 586, Krush runs to guava, mango, pineapple, honeydew and peach, so putting it beside Anchovie sets a known quantity next to a wildcard.

The festival itself lands on August 29 at the Etobicoke brewery and runs in two sessions, split by soundtrack: an afternoon of country and soul with line dancing, billed as family friendly, and an evening of classic rock and 90s and 2000s hits for the 19-plus crowd.

Brewed For You Hazy Pale Ale is available now at the brewery, the GLB Brewpub and the online shop, at $3.35 for a 473 mL can or $65 a case, and will be pouring at the festival.