Threshold Brewing & Blending has spent the past few days pouring the same West Coast IPA twice, changed only by the hop in it. Today it pours a third time.
Fresh Hop Electric Fields - Luminosa taps at the Montavilla taproom today and completes the brewery's fresh hop trio. Like Centennial and Strata before it, it sits at 6.5 percent and uses the same base recipe, with a single fresh varietal as the only moving part. This one takes fresh Luminosa from Indie Hops. Threshold describes vibrant, clean tropical fruit notes.
Holding a recipe still and swapping one ingredient is a familiar idea in brewing, but it is rarely done in public, at this scale, with beers on adjacent taps. The three Electric Fields releases give a drinker the chance to isolate what a single hop is actually contributing, which is normally something only the brewer gets to know. Two of the three, Strata and Luminosa, come from Indie Hops. The Centennial came from Crosby Farm.
There is a further wrinkle worth noting. Fresh hop character is not just a stronger version of the dried original. Undried cones carry moisture and green plant matter into the tank, which tends to bring out grassier, more herbal notes alongside the fruit. Whatever separates these three beers is therefore a fresh-hop difference, not a straight read of how the varieties behave in pellet form.
Luminosa arrives on the same day as Threshold's Fresh Hop Piwo and Fresh Hop Festbier. Cans of all five of this week's fresh hop releases land alongside them. Draft pours count toward the taproom's fresh hop punch card, which runs through Friday, October 9.
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.