Name: Wet Exit
Brand: Kern River Brewing Co
Availability: InStock

The hops for this beer were on a bine in Oregon in the morning and in a brewhouse in Kernville by the end of the day. That is not a flourish in the telling, it is the requirement.

Kern River Brewing Company has released Wet Exit, a wet-hopped IPA made with roughly 500 pounds of fresh Strata hops from Westwood Farms in Oregon. The brewery says the cones were picked in the morning and flown to California, where staff collected them the same day and brewed immediately. Kern River makes the beer once a year, and has put 20 cases into its online store.

Wet hopping means skipping the step that normally sits between the farm and the brewery. Hops are usually dried and pelletized after harvest, which stabilizes them for storage and strips out most of the plant matter. Here the cones go in undried, straight from the bag, with a shelf life measured in hours rather than months.

The brewery's method is worth spelling out. After the wort goes to the whirlpool, Kern River sends it back into the mash tun and lets it soak on the fresh cones for a stretch - the brewery's own comparison is steeping tea. Running the wort backward through the brewhouse that way turns the mash tun into a hop vessel, and Kern River says it pulls out the hop oils along with a good deal of the green plant character that processing would otherwise remove.

Fermentation does the rest. The brewery notes that hops carry a range of organic compounds beyond the ones responsible for bitterness and aroma, and that those interact with the yeast during fermentation. That interaction is part of why a wet hop beer reads differently from a heavily dry-hopped one built on the same variety.

Quantities are limited to the 20 cases listed online.

Editor’s Take

The detail I keep returning to is that the hops took a flight. Five hundred pounds of Strata cones went from a bine in Oregon to a plane to a brewhouse in Kernville between morning and evening, because the clock on an undried hop is measured in hours and there is no version of this beer that involves a truck.

The process choice is the other good part. Sending the wort back into the mash tun to soak on the cones is effectively building a hop tea out of a vessel that has already done its job for the day, and Kern River is refreshingly plain about what that buys: hop oils, yes, but also the plant character that normally gets stripped out during processing. That is the whole case for wet hopping stated without decoration. Most of what we taste as hop flavor is what survived the kiln, and once a year somebody skips the kiln to show you the rest. Strata is a good cultivar to try it with, too - it leans passionfruit and dank grape even when dried, so the green version has somewhere interesting to go.

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.

Wet Exit Steeps 500 Pounds of Air-Freighted Strata in the Mash Tun

Picked in Oregon in the morning, flown south, and brewed the same day. Kern River sends hot wort back into the mash tun to steep on 500 pounds of fresh Strata cones, and makes this beer once a year.

Source & Editorial