You might not realize that hops—one of four necessary ingredients in beer—are only fresh, or "ripe," for a 6- to 8-week window every year. That's usually from mid-August until mid-September when, amazingly, all the hops in America are picked from their bines. The vast majority are dried, often to be turned into pellets or extracts, in order that breweries have a hops supply for the other ten months of the year. But, an incredibly small amount of these fresh hops are immediately thrown into brew kettles for a beloved style of beer called wet hop ale which only hits the marketplace during this brief harvest season.

What if I told you this is all about to change and—for the first time ever—you will soon be able to drink wet hop beer year round?

The Yakima Valley in Washington is one of the world's meccas for hops growing. In fact, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company founder Ken Grossman has been traveling there since 1976, back when he was nothing more than a homebrew shop owner. He opened his iconic brewery in 1980 and since then has developed direct relationships with many of the area's hops farmers. It was one such farmer who inspired the brewery's latest innovation, one that could completely change the beer industry.

This man (who Grossman refused to disclose the name of) also happens to be a mint farmer. While visiting his (also undisclosed) farm three years ago, Grossman noticed the man had built a unique contraption for extracting fresh mint oils from his mint leaves. Grossman wondered if the farmer could possibly use the same device for his hops. He could.

During the harvest season of 2012, the farmer took a trailer to the hops fields. This trailer was filled with freshly-picked hops cones, then immediately connected to a steam machine. As the steam filled the enclosed trailer and its heat hit the wet cones, the hops' oils were distilled into a "vapor." (Hop cones are composed of about 1-3% oil by weight.) Once all of these oils had been extracted and vaporized, the vapors moved into a condenser where they cooled back into a highly-concentrated liquid and then were collected.

The experiment had worked!

Grossman now had fresh hops oil, something that—to his knowledge—no other brewery had ever successfully captured.

Before you have a geek fit and try to correct me, sure, hops oils have been used over the years, but those have always come from dried cones. What Grossman hoped was this pure hops essence could be used year-round and, thus, turn the Beaujolais nouveau of the beer world, wet hop beer, into a year-round offering. After three years of experimenting—and after having that same farmer build a custom hops vaporizor trailer, exclusively for Sierra Nevada's usage—on February 1 the brewery will release Hop Hunter IPA. The first ever wet hop beer...that's even fresh in the winter.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on some early samples. Wet hop beers are one of my favorite styles, and I'm always sad when yet another season ends for them. Thankfully, Hop Hunter reminds me of the best of them, beers like Founders Harvest, Three Floyds Broo Doo, and, of course, Sierra Nevada's "legitimate" Harvest offerings.

Like most wet hop beers, Hop Hunter is extraordinarily floral and aromatic, like sticking your nose into a freshly-picked plant or flower bouquet. It's not really bitter-tasting either, certainly not as bitter as your typical IPAs. That's perhaps because the IPA isn't 100% hopped by the oil vapors and, in fact, pounds of traditional whole-cone hops are used for other parts of the brewing process.

You see, this wet hops oil is far too potent to use for the entire beer. I mean, it's extremely potent. Grossman told me if you put just a drop of the oil on your tongue you'd still be tasting hops the next day (unfortunately, he refused to let me go straight Jackass and actually test that out). Thus, the wet hops oil is used quite judiciously for Hop Hunter, mainly to give it that flowery aroma endemic of wet hop beer.

This aroma is so strong that Sierra Nevada still has test vials of the oil from that 2012 batch that still smell like fresh hops. That's an incredible tool for a brewery to have in their arsenal, especially considering hops freshness in beer typically degrades in under 90 days, sometimes even quicker for these wet hop offerings.

Still, even if the unique hops oil in the beer enables it to taste "fresh" for quite awhile, Sierra Nevada has enough of it stored in hermetically-sealed containers to keep producing Hop Hunter year-round. Our days of having to wait 'til the next harvest season for this great style of beer seem to finally be over.

Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.'

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