Five hop additions go into Walkable City. Four of them are cryo.

Mosaic

Mosaic Cryo

Nelson Cryo

Krush Cryo

Simcoe Cryo

Green Cheek Beer Company released it today as the second half of its Special Labor Day Drop, a double dry-hopped West Coast IPA at 7.0 percent, 18 dollars a four-pack. The brewery says it had been working on the recipe in the background for a while before bringing it out.

Cryo hops are lupulin - the sticky resin carrying hop oil - separated from the leafy material of the pellet at very low temperature and concentrated. Most beers use a measure of it to sharpen a dry hop. Building nearly the whole bill out of it is a different order of decision.

It suits what Green Cheek says it was chasing. The brewery describes a modern West Coast IPA: wonderfully pale in color, New School in hop character, with a firm and snappy bitterness. Those three things work against each other when you pursue them with ordinary pellets. Heavy pellet dry-hopping drags in plant material that nudges the color up, rounds off the bitterness and adds a grassy pull. Taking that material out beforehand is how a beer carries this much aroma and still lands pale and sharp.

The tasting notes commit. Green Cheek describes fresh nugs of the Devil's Lettuce jumping out of the glass, with no garlic or onion behind them, running into heavy zesty citrus and something Cactus Cooler-like.

The garlic-and-onion caveat is a real one rather than a joke. Pushing certain hops hard can throw sulfur compounds that land nearer to alliums than to fruit, and it is a known hazard at exactly the aroma levels this beer is aiming for. Putting the disclaimer in the release notes is a way of saying they went looking for it.

Cactus Cooler is the local shorthand. The orange-pineapple soda has always been strongest in Southern California, which makes it a reference an Orange County brewery can drop without explaining. It also names the combination well: orange citrus with a tropical sweetness sitting behind it.

The name gets its own small wish, and the can art runs with it. Behind the brewery's parrot is a street scene with trees, rooflines and a crosswalk. Green Cheek signed off the announcement by asking who is ready for a walkable city.

Walkable City is available now at Green Cheek's taprooms.

Editor’s Take

Walkable City is a lovely thing to name a beer in Southern California, a region that has spent roughly a century arranging itself around the confident assumption that you will drive. There is a whole genre of beer name that works this way - the thing you wish were true, printed on one of the few objects you can actually hold in your hand. A brewery cannot rezone anything. It can put a crosswalk on a can and raise the subject.

There is also a joke buried in the logistics, which is that the taproom is the single piece of infrastructure that benefits most obviously from walkability, for reasons Green Cheek is far too well mannered to spell out in a Friday email. They asked who is ready for a walkable city. Everyone currently holding a 7 percent West Coast IPA, I would have thought.

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.

Walkable City Builds Its Hop Bill Almost Entirely From Cryo

Five hop additions go into Walkable City and four of them are cryo. That is how a West Coast IPA gets this much aroma while staying pale and keeping its bitterness sharp. Out now at 7.0 percent.

Source & Editorial