The Gigantic Fresh Hop Conspiracy Pulls Strata From Two Farms

Two breweries, two brew days, two hop farms, one beer. Gigantic and Black Raven built this fresh hop IPA on Strata from Coleman Agriculture and Westwood Farms, which is a logistics answer as much as a recipe.

Style: Fresh Hop IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-10
ABV: 6.2%
Gigantic Brewing Company (Portland, OR)

Gigantic Brewing Company frames this one as an equation: two breweries, two brew days, two hop farms, one beer.

The Gigantic Fresh Hop Conspiracy is a collaboration with Black Raven, released September 10 at 6.2 percent and brewed with fresh Strata from Coleman Agriculture and Westwood Farms. It is the third of five fresh hop beers Gigantic is putting out this month.

The two-farm sourcing is worth pausing on, because it is a constraint before it is a flourish. Undried hops have to be in a kettle within hours of coming off the bine, which means a fresh hop brew day is scheduled around a picking window rather than the other way around. Any one farm can only supply so much on a given morning while it is also harvesting for everyone else. Two brew days across two farms is how a collaboration of this size gets enough green hop material through the door at the right moment.

Strata is a fitting variety for the exercise. It is an Oregon-bred hop, and it has become one of the state's signature fresh hop choices, known in dried form for passionfruit and a dank, resinous edge that makes it hard to mistake for anything else. Running it undried tends to push the green, herbal side of that forward.

Collaborations often amount to two brewers in one room for an afternoon. This one required both breweries to build the same beer twice, in separate places, from hops picked at different farms, and then trust the halves to agree with each other.

The Gigantic Fresh Hop Conspiracy is out now.

Editor’s Take

A group of ravens is called a conspiracy. This is a real collective noun and not one I have invented for the occasion, and it sits here alongside a collaboration with a brewery called Black Raven, on a can with an entire committee of the birds glowering out of a hot pink background, under the word CONSPIRACY. I am prepared to believe a great many things are coincidence. This is not one of them.

What pleases me is that the name also describes the beer accurately, which puns are usually far too pleased with themselves to bother doing. Two breweries, meeting separately, on two different days, at two different farms, to assemble one product that neither of them made alone. If you described that arrangement without mentioning beer, it would sound like something a subcommittee was formed to investigate.

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.