Riff Mountain #23 Puts a Two-Year-Old Hop on a Fixed Recipe

Twenty-three numbered batches in, the Riff Mountain grain bill and yeast have not moved. The hops have. This round brings in Krush, a variety that only reached the commercial market in 2024.

Style: New England Double IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-25
ABV: 8.8%
South County Brewing Company (York, PA)

Twenty-three renditions in, South County Brewing Company has a fairly clear idea of what a Riff Mountain is. The Pennsylvania brewery's latest numbered batch is pouring now on draft and available in cans to go, brewed with Mosaic, Krush and Nectaron.

The series is the frame worth understanding first. South County describes Riff Mountain as a rotating project built on big bodied, massively dry hopped New England style double IPAs, with each rendition denoted by a number. The brewery lists the series at 8.8 percent. What stays fixed is the foundation: malted oats, flaked oats and white wheat malt, which South County credits with a rich, almost silky texture, plus a yeast fermentation profile it says has been developed specifically to drive tropical and fruit esters.

So the base is settled. The hops are the variable, and that is what a number on the label actually tracks.

This round leans on a genuinely new one. Krush was released commercially by the Hop Breeding Company in 2024 under the developmental name HBC 586, and it carries orange, mango, guava, peach and mixed berry with a woody edge underneath. Mosaic is the veteran of the three and needs no introduction in a hazy double IPA. Nectaron is the New Zealand variety known for pineapple and tropical fruit. All three pull in roughly the same direction, which in a beer engineered to throw fruit esters of its own is less a hedge than a decision to commit.

South County's tasting notes for #23 run to Dole fruit cup, berries, candied peach, tropical punch "now and later," and bright pine. The candy reference is the brewery's own, and it is a more precise piece of writing than it first appears - a fruit chew is sweet, concentrated and a little artificial in exactly the way a heavily dry hopped double IPA can be. The bright pine at the end is the part keeping all that fruit from collapsing into syrup.

Riff Mountain #23 is available now on draft and in cans to go. South County operates taprooms in York, Fawn Grove and Lancaster.

Editor’s Take

Twenty-three is a lot of numbers for one beer. It is also an admission that the brewery figured out the hard part early and has spent the intervening batches changing its mind about hops, which is a very honest way to run a series. The oats and wheat stay. The yeast stays. Everything that makes the beer silky and estery is settled law, and the only open question each time is what goes in the dry hop.

Which makes Krush the news here, a hop that was still wearing its lab name two years ago. Putting a brand new variety into batch twenty-three of a recipe you have already proven is the low-risk way to audition it - if it does not work, the floor underneath is solid, and there is always a twenty-four. The tasting notes suggest it worked out. 'Tropical punch now and later' is doing something clever, too: it reads as a timeline until you notice it is a candy, and then it reads as both.

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.