Guava Galaxy Puts an Australian Hazy-IPA Hop on Pink Guava

Galaxy is an Australian hop that built its name in hazy IPAs. Potter's has pointed it at pink guava puree and fresh pressed apples instead, and the combination is back after a few years away.

Style: Hopped Cider
Release Date: 2026-09-25
ABV: N/A
Potter's Craft Cider (Charlottesville, VA)

Galaxy is an Australian hop that made its reputation in hazy IPAs, prized for passionfruit and peach aromatics at intensities few other varieties reach. Potter's Craft Cider has aimed it at pink guava and fresh pressed apples instead.

Guava Galaxy is made with fresh pressed apples, pink guava puree, and Galaxy hops, and the Charlottesville, Virginia cidery describes it as tropical, tart, and aromatically intense. It comes in four-packs of 12-ounce cans as part of the Cider Club share available for pickup beginning Friday, September 25.

Hopping a cider is not a novelty for this producer. Potter's already lists Citra Cider and Passionfruit Mosaic in its lineup, both built on hop varieties better known to beer drinkers. The logic holds up: hops added to cider contribute aroma and a little structure without the bitterness that the same varieties would bring to a beer, where they spend time in a boil. In cider, the hop mostly shows up on the nose.

Galaxy is a pointed choice for this particular can. Its signature tropical character runs in the same direction as guava, so the hop reinforces the fruit rather than contrasting with it, and both sit over an apple base that brings acidity of its own. Tart is the word the cidery leads with, and between guava's acidity and the apples, that tracks. It would hold up well next to something salty and grilled, or against the kind of chili heat that a sweeter drink tends to smother.

Cider Club only

Potter's says it has not made Guava Galaxy or Watermelon Saison in a few years and is bringing both back for a limited run. Both are restricted to Cider Club members, the quarterly subscription the cidery releases in March, June, September, and December. This is the September share, rounded out by a returning Cranberry Orange Blossom.

Shares are ready for pickup at the Arrowhead Valley Road tasting room starting Friday, September 25.

Editor’s Take

Galaxy is a hop with a very short list of things it wants to be. Passionfruit, peach, and an almost syrupy tropical intensity - it is the hop that convinced a generation of drinkers that a beer could taste like a fruit cup without any fruit in it. So there is something pleasantly redundant about pairing it with actual pink guava, which is already doing the tropical job unassisted. It is belt and suspenders, except both the belt and the suspenders are mango-adjacent.

What saves it from being too much of one idea is tartness. Guava carries real acidity, cider is acidic by nature, and Galaxy contributes aroma far more than it contributes bitterness at the doses a cidermaker would use. The result Potter's describes - tropical, tart, aromatically intense - is a drink built on sharpness with the perfume stacked on top, not a sweet one. This is also the second hopped cider on their roster this year worth talking about, after Citra Cider, which suggests someone at Arrowhead Valley Road has quietly decided the hop shelf belongs to cidermakers too. They are not wrong. Apples and hops have been getting along far longer than the marketing has.

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.