Smuttynose – Herbaceous Wet Hop Ale

I love this time of year for beer….and not for the pumpkin & fest beers, but for the Harvest & wet hop ales.  Today we have Smuttynose Herbaceous Wet Hop Ale.  This is a big 25.36oz bottle and no word on ABV…find this one now and drink it NOW!

UPDATE 10/5 From SmuttyNose:

Her • ba • ceous [hur-bey-shuhs, ur-] adj  1: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an herb

It’s that time of year again, hop harvest time. And what could be better than a wet hopped beer? Since the East Coast is about 3,000 miles from the hop fields, our access to these beers can be a tad limited.  Thirst no more beer drinkers; Smuttynose is ready to fill your pints with Herbaceous, our new Short Batch, wet-hopped beer!

We’ve been talking about brewing a wet hop beer for several years, but the freshly-picked hops need to either be dried and baled or, in the case of wet-hopped beers, used in a brew within hours. Getting hops from Yakima Valley was a daunting expense for two reasons.  One, we needed 150 lbs and two, they had to travel 3,000 miles as quickly as possible. Well, the stars aligned this year, which means we snuck the overnight shipping charges past Peter while he was busy with the construction of our new facility at Towle Farm in Hampton.

His oversight is your gain, because the beer came out beautifully. We decided to go with a very simple malt bill using nothing but Vienna and CaraMunich II, from Weyermann Malt, to brew an amber ale as the base beer. Bittering was done with Magnum and we used Willamette and Sterling for the flavoring additions. The 150 lbs of freshly-picked Citra were used exclusively for the wet hop-as- dry hop component that we felt was the best way to showcase the pungent essence of hops right off the vine.  The best way for you to showcase these ethereal hop flavors it to drink the beer as soon as possible, just not on your way from Smuttynose.

We’ve got 46 cases of bottles going on sale on Thursday, October 11 from 5-7pm.  There will be a two bottle limit and as always, we’ll have Herbaceous on tap for you taste.  If you haven’t been to Smuttynose for a Short Batch bottle release, please enter through our tour entrance located in the back corner of our building at 225 Heritage Avenue in Portsmouth, NH.

Stat Box

4.35% ABV 50 IBU

Starting Extract: 11.6° Plato Terminal Extract:  3.5° Plato

Malts: Weyermann Vienna and Weyermann CaraMunich

Hops: Bittering: Magnum, Flavor: Willamette and Sterling, Wet: Citra from BT Loftus Ranch

Yeast: WLP-001 California Ale

Batch size: 30 barrels (46 cases for sale)

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