Fresh hop beers are usually described in green terms - grassy, herbal, resinous, a little vegetal. Wayfinder Beer has gone somewhere else with Horn of Plenty, a fresh hop lager out now at 5.1% ABV. The brewery sums it up in two notes: rose petals and pink peppercorn.
Both sit closer to a perfume counter than a hop field, and both are aromatic rather than green. That is a reasonable direction for this particular format. Fresh hopping means undried hops going into the beer within hours of coming off the bine. The aromatics that survive the trip intact tend to be the delicate, volatile ones that a kiln would otherwise drive off. Put them on a light lager base, with no heavy bitterness or malt weight competing for attention, and those are exactly the compounds with room to be noticed.
Fresh hop beers exist for only a few weeks each year, and the Pacific Northwest harvest is just getting underway. That makes this an early one. Horn of Plenty is pouring now.
Source & Editorial
JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.