North Park Beer Co. wrote its latest release notes as a detective story. The kettle was boiling, the fermentors were bubbling, and the brew team had gone missing. The evidence left behind was hop bags and spilled malt, and the brewery's own verdict names The Fu! Crew, with a mash paddle, in the cellar.

Under the bit is a triple dry-hopped hazy double IPA at 8.4 percent ABV, and the evidence list is the actual recipe. Waimea, Nelson, Nectaron, Riwaka and Galaxy make up the hop bill, over a base of Pilsner and oat malt.

That is a heavily Southern Hemisphere lineup, and an expensive one. Four of the five are New Zealand varieties, with Galaxy arriving from Australia. Riwaka is the scarcest name in the group, a low-yielding New Zealand hop that turns up in limited releases rather than year-round recipes. Nectaron is a much newer arrival, bred in New Zealand and released commercially only in recent years. Putting all five in one beer is a deliberate choice to stay in a single hemisphere rather than reach for the familiar American citrus hops a San Diego double IPA could easily have leaned on.

The malt side is built to get out of the way. Pilsner malt keeps the base clean and pale, while oats supply the soft body and haze the style is judged on. Triple dry-hopping is the other half of that equation, loading aroma in after fermentation rather than boiling it off.

North Park describes lingering notes of tropical guava, sticky pear and lychee. Those are the flavors this particular group of hops is known for reaching, and lychee in particular is a Riwaka and Nelson signature rather than something an American hop bill produces. For anyone wanting to eat alongside it, the tropical fruit and the 8.4 percent would stand up to something with chili heat and lime.

Mysterious Mystery is out now in four-packs at $24, alongside Freshie Fresh in the same drop. North Park has been brewing in San Diego since 2016, with its flagship taproom on University Avenue in North Park and further locations in Bankers Hill and Crown Point.

Editor’s Take

Most breweries would have listed those five hops in a row and called it a day. North Park instead staged a crime scene - hop bags strewn about, Pilsner and oat malt littering the floor, a brew team who cannot be located and a closing accusation delivered in full Cluedo cadence: The Fu! Crew, with a mash paddle, in the cellar. It is a genuinely committed bit, and the pleasing part is that the evidence is all real. Those bags actually were opened. That malt actually is on the floor of the recipe.

What gets me is the phrase cold case, which is doing double duty as a detective cliche and as an entirely accurate instruction about how to store a triple dry-hopped double IPA. Hop aroma this loud has a short shelf life and a strong preference for refrigeration. Somewhere in that pun is the only storage advice most of us will actually remember.

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.

Mysterious Mystery Stages a Whodunit Around Five New Zealand Hops

North Park wrote its double IPA release notes as a detective story, with the brew team as suspects and the hop bags as evidence. Under the bit sits a serious Southern Hemisphere hop bill: Waimea, Nelson, Nectaron, Riwaka and Galaxy.

Source & Editorial