Dripping with Dankness Runs on 300 Pounds of Wet Strata

Wet hop beer runs on a clock that no other style has to respect.

Hops are normally dried and pelletized before they ever reach a brewery, which is what makes them a year-round ingredient. Wet hops skip that step entirely and have to go into a tank within a day or so of leaving the field. North Park Beer Co. put more than 300 pounds of fresh Strata into this one.

Dripping with Dankness is a double dry-hopped Wet Hopped IPA at 7 percent ABV, the San Diego brewery's contribution to a season that lasts only as long as the harvest does. Alongside the wet Strata, the bill lists Columbus Cryo, Strata Cryo, Strata, and Mosaic.

One hop, caught at three stages

Strata appears three separate times on that list, and the versions are not interchangeable. There is the wet form, undried and perishable. There is Strata Cryo, a concentrated lupulin powder that is about as stable and as shelf-ready as a hop product gets. And there is conventional Strata pellet sitting between the two.

Strata is a comparatively recent American variety, and the character most associated with it is exactly the one the beer is named after: a resinous, sticky dankness, usually alongside strawberry and passion fruit. Building a beer that captures the same hop at three points in its processing life is a reasonable way to find out how much of that character survives drying, and how much of it only exists while the hop is still wet.

The brewery describes aromas of white peach, strawberry, passion fruit, and resiny pine, and says the first thing to land on the palate is that dankness, followed by candied lemon peel, more white peach, and a touch of tropical fruit. Columbus, the one variety here that is not Strata or Mosaic, is a long-established American hop with a pungent, resinous profile of its own, so it is reinforcing rather than diversifying.

A beer built around pine resin and candied citrus peel has enough grip to stand up to rich food. It would do well next to something fatty and salty rather than something delicate.

The can is available for pickup at North Park's San Diego taprooms, with California shipping through the brewery's site. Like everything else in wet hop season, it is not coming back until next harvest.