Some collaboration beers are brewed once and remembered fondly. This one came back with a hop harvest attached.

Kings and Daughters visited Fort George in the spring to brew Glass Daggers, a West Coast Pale Ale the Astoria brewery describes as light, bright and slightly magical. Fort George liked it enough to brew it a second time, and the September version arrives with 100 pounds of fresh Coleman Chinook hops in it.

The rest of the hop bill stays where it was. The beer runs on Motueka, Nelson and Nelson AmpliFire Oil, which Fort George describes as making for a crispy, tasty pale ale. AmpliFire Oil is a concentrated hop oil product, used to add aroma intensity without the vegetal load that comes from packing in more plant material - a useful tool in a beer that is already carrying a hundred pounds of undried cones.

Fresh hop beers depend on timing rather than recipe. The cones go into the brewery within hours of coming off the bine, before drying can drive off the volatile oils, which is why the style exists only during harvest and why a fresh hop version of a beer is never quite the same beer twice. The Coleman farms in Oregon's Willamette Valley are a long-standing supplier for Pacific Northwest fresh hop brewing.

At 5 percent ABV, it is the lightest beer on Fort George's current fresh hop list, which also includes fresh hop versions of Cavatica Stout and Mirrored Realities, the barleywine Thunder Blanket, and collaborations with Ruse Brewing and Ghost Town Brewing.

It is draft only, at the pub this weekend.

Editor’s Take

Chinook is the interesting guest here, because it does not obviously belong. The base beer runs on Motueka and Nelson Sauvin, two New Zealand hops that live in the bright end of the spectrum - lime, white wine, a gooseberry snap. Chinook is the opposite temperament: American, resinous, piney, grapefruit pith, the hop people reach for when they want a West Coast IPA to have teeth.

Dropping 100 pounds of it into that base, wet and unprocessed, should be a collision. It probably isn't, and the reason is that fresh hops behave differently from the kilned version of themselves. Undried Chinook tends to show up green and herbal rather than sharply resinous, which lands it closer to the grassy register the New Zealand hops are already working in. What you likely get is not conflict but a widening - the same bright beer with a darker green edge underneath it. And at 5 percent, on draft only, for as long as the harvest lasts.

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 Glass Daggers Adds 100 Pounds of Chinook to a Spring Collab

A spring collaboration with Kings and Daughters comes back for hop season with 100 pounds of fresh Coleman Chinook on top of its Motueka and Nelson base. Draft only, at the pub.

Source & Editorial