Bristol PorchFest puts bands on the front porches of High Street and lets the audience walk from one to the next. Pivotal Brewing Company has made the beer for the walk.
Porchfest Groove is this year's official festival collaboration, a lager at 4.6 percent brewed with Saphir and Opal hops. The can names both partners outright: Pivotal Brewing and Arts in Common, the Bristol nonprofit that has run PorchFest since 2018.
The hops are the part worth slowing down for. Saphir and Opal both come out of the German aroma breeding program in the Hallertau, and neither turns up often in an American lager. Saphir leans citrusy and floral. Opal runs more herbal and peppery. Between them they cover more ground than the single noble hop a crisp lager usually gets, without pushing the beer anywhere near IPA territory.
Pivotal describes the result as bright and refreshing, crisp and delicate, with floral and cracker notes. The brewery calls it one for a porch-hopping afternoon.
That phrase is closer to a specification than a slogan. A festival that scatters its audience along a street of porches asks something particular of a beer. It has to hold up across a whole afternoon, and it has to stay light enough that the afternoon keeps moving. At 4.6 percent, with the delicacy Pivotal is claiming rather than any real weight, Porchfest Groove is brewed to that assignment.
Cans are a limited release and go out Thursday, September 3, at the brewery's Porchfest launch party. The party runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Wood Street mill taproom, with live music and this year's Porchfest merch alongside the beer.
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.