Name: Night Queen
Brand: Blood Brothers Brewing
Availability: InStock

Most hop bills name the variety. Blood Brothers Brewing's newest hazy IPA names the farm as well.

Night Queen is a 6.2 percent Hazy IPA hopped with Motueka, Riwaka and Rakau, and the Toronto brewery credits all three to Freestyle Hops. Freestyle is an independent grower in New Zealand's Nelson region. What it trades on is lot selection: brewers come to the farm and pick specific lots, rather than ordering a variety by name and taking whatever arrives in the bale.

That practice matters most for the third hop on the list. Rakau is the stone fruit variety of the three, and Freestyle picks its Rakau later than convention suggests. The stated reasoning is that hanging longer deepens the ripe apricot character and keeps the grassy edge out of it. Blood Brothers lists ripe stone fruit among the aromas here, which on a Rakau from this particular farm is a note somebody decided on months before the beer was brewed.

The other two are Nelson-region mainstays. Motueka is the lime hop, descended from Saaz and carrying a clean lemon-lime citrus. Riwaka is the scarce one, low-yielding and difficult to secure in volume, and prized for an intense passionfruit aroma.

The brewery describes fresh lime, passionfruit, ripe stone fruit and subtle resin, held up by a soft malt backbone and finishing crisp.

The can is black, with a spiked bloom in magenta, orange and yellow opening around a pale starburst, and the name set in jagged letters above and below it.

Night Queen is in 473 mL tall cans now, available at the Geary Avenue bottle shop in Toronto and through the brewery's online store. It lands the same week as Ginger Typhoon, a returning 5 percent ginger beer.

Editor’s Take

There is a point in most hop-forward beer copy where the brewery lists three varieties and moves on, satisfied. Night Queen lists three varieties and then tells you whose field they came off, which is a small addition that quietly reorders the whole sentence. Motueka, Riwaka and Rakau are not exotic on their own any more. Motueka, Riwaka and Rakau from one grower who lets brewers walk the rows and choose their own lots is a different claim - closer to a wine label owning up to which slope it came off than to a list of ingredients.

The part I keep circling back to is the Rakau. Freestyle leaves it hanging longer than convention says you should, on the theory that the apricot deepens and the grassy note never turns up. That is a decision made in a paddock in New Zealand, in one particular week, by somebody standing there reading the weather - and it arrives in Toronto as two words on a can. If you want the whole chain in one bite, put this beside something salty with stone fruit in play. Prosciutto and a ripe apricot would do it. That is a suggestion, not a promise.

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.

Night Queen Credits the Hop Farm, Not Just the Varieties

Blood Brothers built Night Queen on three New Zealand hops from a single grower - Motueka, Riwaka and Rakau, all credited to Freestyle. The brewery promises fresh lime, passionfruit and ripe stone fruit at 6.2 percent.

Source & Editorial