Name: Hazy Days Route #55
Brand: Guggman Haus Brewing Co.
Availability: InStock

Buying a hop and choosing a lot of it are two different transactions. Guggman Haus Brewing Co. did the second one for Hazy Days Route #55. The 6.8 percent NEIPA is new this week, built on a freshly selected lot of Motueka from Freestyle Hops.

Freestyle grows in the Moutere Valley near Nelson, at the top of New Zealand's South Island. It also offers lot selection to its customers: a brewery picks the particular batch it wants out of a given harvest rather than ordering the variety and taking whatever ships. Guggman Haus says it chose this one for vibrant lemon-lime citrus layered with sweet tropical fruit.

Motueka comes by that citrus honestly. It is a New Zealand variety with Saaz in its parentage, released in the 1990s as Belgian Saaz, shortened soon after to B Saaz, and renamed in 2007 for the growing area it comes from. The noble-hop half of that family tree is where the lime and lemon zest and the light herbal edge originate, and it is why Motueka is a standard pick for pilsners and saisons. Fronting it in a hazy IPA is the less expected use. It puts a cleaner, sharper citrus at the top of a style that usually leads with tropical fruit. Anyone matching food to it would do well with something limey and salty - fish tacos, ceviche, chips and a bright salsa verde.

The hop turns up elsewhere on the brewery's list, too. Guggman Haus uses Motueka in the whirlpool of its Mexican Lager, where it lends a splash of lime over flaked corn. Route #55 is the release that puts it out front instead.

Hazy Days Route #55 is the fifty-fifth entry in the brewery's numbered hazy series and is pouring now at Guggman Haus.

Editor’s Take

There is something wonderfully unglamorous about a hop that spent its first decade being called Belgian Saaz, got shortened to B Saaz because apparently even that was too much fuss, and was only granted a name of its own in 2007. Motueka had to earn its passport. And it is a Saaz descendant, which means the New Zealand hop handing this hazy IPA its lemon-lime lift is, somewhere back up the family tree, a Czech pilsner hop that went travelling and came home with a tan.

The other detail worth appreciating is that Guggman Haus did not simply order Motueka. They selected a lot. Lot selection is the closest thing brewing has to picking your own apples - same variety, same farm, different bins, and somebody has to actually smell the difference. It is slow, unphotogenic work that never makes it onto the can, and it is the reason two beers built on the same named hop can land nowhere near each other. Fifty-five entries into a numbered series, the easy move is to reorder whatever worked last time. Choosing a specific lot is the opposite of that.

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.

Hazy Days Route #55 Is Built Around One Selected Motueka Lot

Guggman Haus went and picked a specific lot of Motueka from New Zealand grower Freestyle Hops for Hazy Days Route #55. The 6.8 percent NEIPA lands on lemon-lime citrus and sweet tropical fruit, the brewery says.

Source & Editorial