The New England IPA is not usually a German project. The malt tends to be American, the hops American or from the southern hemisphere, and the whole style was built on aromas that German hop fields spent a century not producing.

Hoppenheim, back in new cans at Guggman Haus this week, pushes against that. The malt is German Heidelberg. The double dry hop is split between German Solero and Citra that the brewery says it selected by hand.

Solero is the more unusual half of that pair. It is one of the newer German aroma hops, and it sits in the tropical and citrus register rather than the herbal, grassy one that German varieties are known for. German breeding was aimed at lager for a very long time. The recent work has been pointed squarely at the fruit-forward character that hazy IPA brewers buy, and Solero belongs to that generation rather than the noble one.

Hand selection is a separate detail worth unpacking. Hop lots vary from field to field and season to season, sometimes considerably, and brewers who care about a specific hop will rub and smell their way through samples before committing to a contract. Citra is common enough that lot quality is the main thing separating one brewery's version from another's, so choosing the lot is a real decision rather than a marketing line.

The two together are a sensible division of labor. Citra brings the citrus and the weight of the aroma, and the brewery's stated notes of orange and mango land comfortably in its range. Solero's job is to add tropical lift from a different direction without simply doubling what Citra already does.

Guggman Haus describes the finish as sweet and zesty citrus. The beer is 6.7 percent and available now in new cans.

Editor’s Take

Hoppenheim is a town that does not exist, and I would like to formally request that it start. The construction is impeccable - take the hop, bolt on the -heim that ends half the place names in southern Germany, and you have invented somewhere with a market square, a church with a copper spire, and presumably a small municipal hop garden that the council argues about. It is exactly the sort of name a brewery lands on at the end of a long afternoon, and it is far better than the ones that get workshopped for a week.

The joke also happens to be accurate, which is the part I enjoy. There genuinely is German malt in this beer and a German hop in the dry hop, so the fictional town has a real address. A hazy IPA that goes to Germany for half its raw materials during Oktoberfest week is a decent piece of scheduling, and it beats the more common approach of putting a pretzel on the label and calling it thematic.

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.

Hoppenheim Runs German Malt and a German Hop Into a NEIPA

Back in new cans for Oktoberfest, Hoppenheim is a hazy IPA with German malt and a German hop in it, which is not where the style usually does its shopping. Citra handles the rest.

Source & Editorial