Afterglow Is Built on Anchovy, a Rare Yakima Experimental

Cabin's brand-new hazy IPA leads with Anchovy, a scarce Washington experimental hop, backed by English Olicana alongside Mosaic and Citra. Seven percent, and timed to hold onto summer a little past its expiry date.

• Style: Hazy IPA
• Release Date: 2026-09-16
• ABV: 7%
• Cabin Brewing Co. (Calgary, AB)

Cabin Brewing Co. has put a hop called Anchovy into its newest beer, and the brewery's own newsletter takes the trouble to clarify that this is a hop and not a fish.

Afterglow is a hazy IPA at 7 percent, new to the Calgary brewery's lineup and out now on tap, in cans and in growlers. Anchovy leads a bill that also includes Olicana, Mosaic and Citra. Cabin describes waves of tropical fruit, ripe peach and citrus, with what it calls punchy aromatics over a soft, smooth body.

Anchovy is the reason to look twice. It is a newer experimental variety out of Segal Ranch in Washington's Yakima Valley, still circulating in small volumes, and hop merchants tend to describe it in terms of watermelon candy, raspberry and pine rather than anything conventionally tropical. That is an unusual thing to build a hazy IPA around, and an unusual thing for a Canadian brewery to get its hands on in quantity.

What sits next to it is just as deliberate. Olicana is English, bred by Charles Faram and grown in Worcestershire, and it carries mango, passion fruit and grapefruit. Mosaic and Citra are the two most familiar hops in the category. So the beer runs a scarce American experimental and a modern English variety through a base of North American workhorses, which is a more well-travelled hop bill than the tasting notes alone would suggest.

The timing is the brewery's stated point. Afterglow arrives in the back half of September, with the light going earlier every week, as a deliberately bright beer aimed at the end of the season rather than the start of one.

Summer had a good run. We're keeping the glow going.

The name is consistent with how Cabin tends to label things. Its taps currently carry Luminosity, Retrospectrum, Geosphere, Technosphere, Daydream and Sunshine Rain, a lineup that reaches for light and colour with some regularity. On the hazy shelf specifically, Afterglow slots in between Daydream at 6.5 percent and Max Sat at 8.