152. BridgePort Hop Harvest Ale

Our second beer from BridgePort; our last one was their IPA, which helped start us off on our delicious odyssey.

Described as a triple-hopped Imperial style fresh hop beer, Hop Harvest pours a hazy orange brown with a light tan head that laces the glass rather well. The nose is slightly floral, slightly burnt—with the burnt seeming to come from the hop astringency. Hop Harvest starts with a bready malt front reminiscent of British beers, and moves into a spicy bitterness with some grassy flavors, and finishes with caramel malt and light apple flavor (acetaldehyde?) and a rich resiny bitterness. The body is medium to light, which was rather surprisingly light for a 7.0% ABV beer, medium carbonation with not much bite, and a clean, refreshing finish with brightness not from the carbonation—more from the fresh hop flavor and tang of the beer. There is also some slight tongue curling from the higher hop levels. A well made fresh hop beer; there is some slight acetaldehyde in the nose and finish, but nothing overbearing, and it gets mixed in with the bitterness at the end. Hop Harvest does have a clean, young taste from the fresh hops that is delicious and refreshing, and even thirst quenching—we will certainly look for this one again next year.

I couldn’t find anything about Hop Harvest on the BridgePort website, but I did find the facebook page listing BridgePort’s Hop Harvest Release Party. I hope you all find that as scary as I do, although those are the kind of updates and invitations that might actually make me interested in facebook.

ABV: 7.0%
IBU: 60

(11/29/2009)