Thanks to Black Raven for the photo.

Hopefully, you can understand why there would be some excitiment from local hop lovers around the release of Black Raven Brewing’s first fresh hop brewed beer release. With the success of their outstanding Trickster IPA and the uber-popular Wisdom Seeker Imperial IPA, fans of Beaux and company have a reason to be excited. To make it even more interesting, fresh hop master Chris Miller, of Snipes Brewing in Yakima, collaborated with Black Raven on this brew. Are you drooling, yet?  Their Wet Hop Harvest Ale will be released at the tap room tomorrow. Growler fills will be available, but no kegs. Following is the story of the brew from Black  Raven, and you can visit their website for some additional photos:

Tuesday September 7th

Black Raven Brewing and Snipes Mountain Brewery brewed a collaboration beer at the Black Raven Brewery.

Brewed by:
Chris “High Life” Miller – Head Brewer/Snipes Mountain Brewery
Beaux Bowman – Head Brewer/Black Raven Brewing
Andy Lapworth – Lead Brewer/Black Raven Brewing
Keil Anderson – Brewer/Black Raven Brewing

This is the first wet hop/harvest ale brewed by Black Raven. This beer is 100% Washington sourced.
All of the barley was grown and malted in Washington. All of the hops were grown in the Yakima valley.

Chris Miller of Snipes Mountain Brewery was kind enough to collaborate with us on this beer. Chris has plenty of experience with wet hop beers and sourced the hops for the project. The hops were taken right off the field on harvest day and then driven to the brewery in a matter of hours. Wet hops are not kilned like hops usually are. Instead, they are brought right into the brewhouse “wet” and as fresh as you can get. Since the hops contain much more moisture than kilned hops, brewers have to use vastly more hops in the beer. As such, wet hop beers tend to have very distinctive hops flavors not encountered every day.

Expected release date: Late September 2010

Hop varieties used:

Washington Sorachi Ace
Washington Crystal