Fresh hop season and Festbier season land in the same few weeks, and they almost never meet. Fresh hop brewing belongs overwhelmingly to IPAs. Festbier belongs to a German tradition that treats hops as seasoning rather than subject. Threshold Brewing & Blending taps a beer today that ignores the distinction.
Fresh Hop Festbier is the harvest-season version of the Portland brewery's annual Festbier, brewed at 5.5 percent with fresh Tettnang hops from Goschie Farms in Oregon.
Tettnang is the detail worth pausing on. It is one of the classic noble hops, the small group of European aroma varieties that give continental lagers their herbal, faintly spicy edge, and it is prized for restraint rather than impact. Undried cones normally get used to push a beer louder. Here they are being used on a hop whose entire reputation is built on not being loud, in a style with very little malt sweetness to hide behind.
Whether that reads as a bolder Festbier or simply a fresher one is the interesting question, and it is one that only stays open for a few weeks. Fresh hop beers cannot be brewed outside harvest, which is why Threshold's fresh hop calendar is spread across September rather than released all at once.
Fresh Hop Festbier is pouring at the Montavilla taproom now and is among the five fresh hop releases going into cans this week. Draft pours count toward the brewery'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.