The timeline is the beer. Green Cheek Beer Company says fresh Strata cones were picked at Coleman Agriculture in Oregon at 4am, put on a plane at 8am, collected at John Wayne Airport at 11am, and were in wort by 3:41pm the same afternoon.

That window is the entire reason fresh hop beer exists as a category. Hops are normally dried and pelletized within hours of the pick, because undried cones carry a great deal of water and begin to degrade almost immediately. Brewing with them wet means accepting a hard deadline measured in hours, and getting in return a green, juicy aromatic character that does not survive the kiln. Most breweries manage it by being close to a hop farm. Green Cheek is in Orange County, roughly a thousand miles south of the Willamette Valley, so it chartered a seat on a commercial flight instead.

The volume is the second unusual number. The brewery says it used 15 pounds per barrel on the hot side. Undried cones are mostly water, so fresh hop rates run far above what a dry-hop figure would suggest, but this is a large charge by any measure.

After fermentation the beer was hopped again, this time with three processed forms of the same variety:

Strata T90

Strata Cryo

Strata Hyperboost

All three came from the same farm as the fresh cones. Green Cheek says it is more hops than it has ever used in a batch. Staying inside one variety across four additions is a deliberate choice: rather than layering different hops for complexity, the beer stacks fresh, whole-pellet, concentrated and intensified versions of Strata to find out how much of one hop's character a beer can hold.

Strata is a good candidate for that treatment. Released by Oregon State University's breeding program and grown commercially in the Willamette Valley, it is known for a passionfruit and berry profile with a resinous edge, which is unusual company for the citrus and pine that define most West Coast hops.

The brewery's tasting notes track with that. Green Cheek describes an intense lychee candy and peach tea profile, with pineapple, orange marmalade and raspberry coming through behind it.

ASAP As Possible returns once a year, and the brewery is clear about why the window is narrow. This year's batch is draft only, pouring at Green Cheek's taprooms in Orange, Costa Mesa, Sunset Beach and Oceanside.

Editor’s Take

The detail that gives this one away is 3:41pm. Not the afternoon, not around four - 3:41. That is a number somebody wrote down while it was happening, because they knew the clock was the whole point and they wanted the receipt. Everything else in the day was arranged around beating it: the 4am pick, the 8am flight, the van idling at John Wayne Airport at eleven.

What I enjoy most is that the beer is then hopped three more times with Strata in forms that are the exact opposite of urgent. T90 pellets, Cryo, Hyperboost - processed, stabilized, shelf-stable, the products invented precisely so nobody would ever again have to meet a plane. Green Cheek used both answers to the same question in the same tank. The fresh cones bring the thing you can only get by racing; the processed forms bring the concentration you can only get by not racing. It is a fairly elegant argument that these were never really rivals.

The cost of the whole exercise is that it will not fit in a can. Fresh hop beer of this sort does not keep, which is why this year's batch is draft only and why it comes around once a year. You go to it. It does not come to you, and it did quite enough travelling already.

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.

ASAP As Possible '26 Went From 4am Vine to Wort by 3:41pm

Strata cones cut in Oregon at 4am were on a plane at 8am and in Green Cheek's wort by 3:41pm the same day. Fifteen pounds per barrel went in hot. Draft only this year.

Source & Editorial