Name: Hope Valley
Brand: South Lake Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

Hope Valley is a real place - a meadow-and-aspen basin south of Lake Tahoe that fills with gold every autumn and fills with cars full of people photographing it shortly after. South Lake Brewing Company has named its new West Coast IPA after it, and framed the beer as a celebration of the change of seasons in the Sierra. It is pouring now at both the brewery's locations and going out the door in 4-packs.

The hop bill is the loud part: Columbus Cryo, Ekuanot, Idaho 7, Simcoe, and Nugget, used throughout the process rather than concentrated at one addition. South Lake describes a bright citrus candy aroma with notes of apricot, grapefruit pith, pine, and lemon drop candy, finishing on a resinous bitterness.

That is a hop list with an unusually wide reach for a single beer. Simcoe and Nugget are the old guard here, both built on pine and resin rather than tropical fruit. Idaho 7 pulls in a different direction entirely, known for apricot and black tea, and Ekuanot for a green, citrus-rind sharpness. Columbus arrives as Cryo, a concentrated lupulin pellet that delivers more oil and less vegetal matter than whole hops for the same aroma punch. The apricot the brewery is pointing at almost certainly comes from Idaho 7, which is the one variety in the bill that could produce it.

Underneath all of that is a two-malt base of 2 Row and Vienna. South Lake says it is there to give the hops a balanced background to pop against, and Vienna is a deliberate choice for the job - it carries a light toasted character that pale two-row does not, adding a touch of body and color without any of the sweetness a crystal malt would bring. In a style that often strips the malt bill down to nothing, a little bread underneath is what keeps a resinous finish from reading as merely sharp.

The brewery is positioning Hope Valley as an alpine foliage beer, which is a narrow but honest seasonal window. It is available on tap at the Brewery on Lake Tahoe Boulevard and at The Libation Lodge in Stateline, with 4-packs of 16-ounce cans available now.

Editor’s Take

Vienna malt in a West Coast IPA is the detail I keep turning over. The orthodox move is to get out of the hops' way entirely - all pilsner malt, nothing in the glass but bitterness and citrus and air. South Lake already did exactly that on Brewers' IPA last month, so this is the same brewery reaching for a different answer four weeks later. Vienna brings a faint toasted, bready warmth, and in a beer hopped this aggressively it does not announce itself so much as give the grapefruit pith something to push against.

Which is a sensible thing to want in late September. A bone-dry summer IPA is built to disappear on a hot afternoon, and that is a virtue right up until the aspens turn and you are standing in a meadow at 7,000 feet in a fleece. The beer named after the drive out to look at that foliage has a little more in the middle of it than the one named after the brew crew. I doubt that is an accident.

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.

Hope Valley Runs Five Hops at a Sierra Leaf-Peeping Season

South Lake named its new West Coast IPA after the Sierra valley locals drive to for fall color, then built it on five hops and a Vienna malt base that gives the whole thing somewhere to land.

Source & Editorial