Piwo is the Polish word for beer, and at Threshold Brewing & Blending it is also the name of the house pilsner. Today it comes back in a version that only exists for a few weeks of the year.
Fresh Hop Piwo taps at the Montavilla taproom today at 5.6 percent, brewed with fresh Simcoe hops from Coleman Agriculture. The brewery notes the standard version is a Best of Craft Beer Awards silver medal winner.
The Polish framing is not decoration. Threshold was opened in January 2019 by Sara and Jarek Szymanski, and Jarek grew up in Wloclawek, Poland, before moving to Portland in 2004. Polish styles and Polish food run through the operation, from a weekly pierogi and kielbasa kitchen to a Grodziskie, the traditional Polish oak-smoked style, among its beers. Piwo is the everyday expression of that.
Putting fresh hops in it is a harder trick than it looks. Fresh hop season overwhelmingly belongs to IPAs, where a big malt and hop structure can absorb whatever the green cones bring with them. A pale pilsner offers no such cover. Everything sits on a thin, dry base with nowhere to hide, so any grassiness or vegetal edge from the undried hops shows up immediately.
Simcoe is an interesting choice for that job. It is an American variety with a piney, resinous streak and a citrus note underneath, and it is far more assertive than the continental hops a Polish pilsner would traditionally lean on. The result should be recognizably the same beer with a distinctly Pacific Northwest inflection.
Fresh Hop Piwo is on draft 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.
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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.