Name: Fresh Hop Lorien Pils
Brand: Ferment Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

The Tolkien reference in this beer's name did not start with the brewery. It started with the hop.

Ferment Brewing Company has released Fresh Hop Lorien Pils, a 5.2 percent West Coast pilsner conditioned on freshly picked whole Lorien cones from Coleman Alluvial Farm. The brewery notes that the name comes from Lothlorien, the Elven woodland in The Lord of the Rings, and describes the beer as crisp yet floral, bold while delicate. Ferment also calls the variety "one hop to rule them all," which is the sort of line a hop named after Middle-earth is always going to attract.

Lorien is a real and reasonably new variety. Shaun Townsend bred it at Oregon State University's hop program from a 2010 cross between a Sterling female and a German male parent, and Indie Hops released it commercially in 2021 as its third variety launch. The naming was the breeder's decision rather than the brewery's, which makes this beer a second-hand reference - Ferment inherited the name along with the cones.

The parentage is what keeps the beer from being a costume. Sterling is an American hop with Saaz in its background, and Saaz is the variety that defines Czech pilsner in the first place. Putting a Sterling descendant into a pilsner is less a novelty pairing than a return to type.

The published aroma notes line up with the brewery's copy more closely than marketing language usually does. Indie Hops lists wildflowers among Lorien's descriptors, alongside lemon and lime zest, fresh melon and a note of cinnamon spice. Ferment's "meadow wildflowers in the breeze" is not purely atmospheric, then. It is roughly what the variety is on record as doing.

Conditioning on whole cones is the other choice worth flagging. Rather than boiling the fresh hops, Ferment is holding them in contact with the finished beer, which is a gentler way to move aroma into something this pale. A pilsner has very little malt sweetness to absorb a heavy hop charge, and not much anywhere to hide a mistake, so the restraint reads as deliberate.

Fresh Hop Lorien Pils is available now on draft and in 16-ounce cans. A fourth and final fresh hop beer, a draft-only Citra hazy IPA, follows on September 14.

Editor’s Take

One hop to rule them all is, strictly speaking, a line from an inscription forged in Mordor, which is nowhere near Lothlorien and is not a region anybody would choose to lager a pilsner in. Nobody has ever resisted that line, and nobody should. I am delighted Ferment reached for it.

What pleases me more is that the reference is inherited rather than invented. Oregon State's breeders named the variety, so a plant raised in Corvallis has been quietly carrying an Elven woodland around since 2021, and Ferment simply declined to call it anything else. Lothlorien was the golden wood - mallorn leaves, light coming down through them, the whole business. The beer is a pale golden pilsner in a glass. Somewhere in that chain a naming decision became accidentally accurate.

And then the hop turns out to be a Sterling descendant, which puts Saaz a couple of branches up the family tree, which means a pilsner is more or less where it was always going to end up. The Elves would have approved, assuming they had the patience to lager.

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.

Fresh Hop Lorien Pils Is Named for a Hop Named for Tolkien

The Tolkien name belongs to the hop before it belongs to the beer. Ferment's 5.2 percent West Coast pilsner is conditioned on whole undried Lorien cones, a Sterling descendant bred at Oregon State.

Source & Editorial