West Coast Pale Ale Runs Four Dry Hops, Then Removes the Gluten

Three of the four dry hops are West Coast standards. The fourth is an experimental variety called Anchovy. Blackfoot's new pale ale is also, like most of the board it joins, crafted to remove gluten.

Style: West Coast Pale Ale
Release Date: 2026-09-07
ABV: 5.5%
Blackfoot River Brewing Company (Helena, MT)

Three of the four hops in the dry hop on Blackfoot River Brewing Company's new pale ale are names any West Coast drinker would recognize. Chinook, Simcoe, El Dorado. The fourth is called Anchovy.

Anchovy is an experimental variety, still carrying a working name rather than a commercial one. Blackfoot has dropped it into a beer that is otherwise a fairly straight read of the style. The base is what the brewery describes as clean pilsner and silo malt. Ekuanot goes into the kettle. After that comes a large whirlpool addition and the four-hop dry hop.

The brewery lists big citrus and tropical fruit up front, with watermelon, raspberry and resinous pine layered underneath. Pine is familiar territory for Chinook and Simcoe in a beer like this. Watermelon and raspberry are the outliers on that list, which makes the unproven hop the interesting variable. There is no public track record on Anchovy to check that guess against, and that is rather the point of putting it in a beer.

Numbers are restrained for something carrying this much hop material. The beer finishes at 5.5 percent and 30 IBU. Blackfoot frames the body as crisp and easy-drinking, built to let the hops do the talking.

One line on the tap sheet is easy to skim past. West Coast Pale Ale is crafted to remove gluten, and so is most of what Blackfoot pours. The same phrase runs under name after name on the brewery's tap list, from the Extra Pale Ale through to the Cream Ale. That is a lineup-wide decision rather than a single accommodating beer parked on the board.

West Coast Pale Ale is on tap now at the Helena taproom.

Editor’s Take

For most of this century, the gluten-free option at a brewery has been a lonely business. One cider hiding at the end of the tap list, or a beer built from sorghum that tasted like a compromise you had agreed to before you sat down. Blackfoot has gone the other way entirely. Rather than brewing one accommodating beer and calling it inclusion, they have run the same process across most of the board, so the person who cannot handle gluten gets to make exactly the same decision as everyone else at the table: pale ale or gose, cream ale or the barrel-aged stout. That is a better kind of hospitality than a dedicated tap, and the nice part is that nobody has to announce anything at the bar.

What pleases me more is that this particular beer is not playing it safe to compensate. Four hops in the dry hop, one of them an experimental variety still going by the name Anchovy, which is either a lab technician's private joke or the most confident piece of hop branding in years. A brewery that is already doing something careful to a beer and then throws an unproven hop at it is not hedging. Find something salty and fried to put next to it.

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.