Why Wet-Hopped IPAs Went Dry

On a Friday morning a couple weeks back, my phone buzzed after dropping my son off at school. A text from Jude La Rose, co-founder of Hop Butcher for the World appeared, inviting me to come by their Taproom that afternoon for the release of a new Wet-Hopped Pale Ale called Fresh Produce. I didn’t have much free time that day, but few beer styles tug at my heart strings more, not only because of their limited season but because they’re an endangered species here in Chicago, and I suspect many other places outside of the Northwest. Not only did I rearrange a few things to make it over that day, but I found myself wondering…

In advance of writing this post, I asked for feedback on Twitter regarding my suggestion that consumer interest in Wet-Hopped IPAs peaked in popularity around 2014. I didn’t mean that as a dis, as many beloved aspects of craft beer peaked in popularity during the middle of the last decade. Other trends and style evolutions simply stole some thunder as craft beer drinkers bifurcated from a unified fanbase, to many more specific sub-segments. The Pacific Northwest took offense to my tweet nonetheless and the resulting banter helped provide additional perspective of where we stand today.

Wet-Hopped vs. Fresh Hops

The last decade in craft beer saw a lot of new terms and definitions enter the fold, often without any governing body to spell out or enforce their parameters. Many were existing terms, but with new spins and interpretations. As a result, we’re left with regionality and marketing having influence over their use and nothing anyone can really do about it. One of these is Wet Hops vs. Fresh Hops, which I didn’t realize was such a controversial topic until this tweet. I always understood them as follows, and still do:

Wet Hops: Harvested and delivered to the beer within 24 hours, without being kilned, dried, and/or pelletized.

Fresh Hops: Recently harvested, but not meeting the credentials of Wet Hops.

Under these definitions, all Wet Hops are Fresh Hops, but they’d always call themselves Wet Hops as its a more premium term given the 24 hour limitation. Most Fresh Hops are thus NOT Wet Hops as they only have the ability to be so for that one day of travel time from harvest to fermenter. Many from the PNW have beef with this explanation, believing that Wet Hops and Fresh Hops are synonymous to my definition of Wet Hop, and that my definition of Fresh Hops doesn’t warrant any celebration.

Now speaking of Celebration, Sierra Nevada states that they brewed the first modern day Wet Hop Beer and fairly considers themselves an authority on the topic. Their seasonal phenomenon Celebration calls itself a Fresh Hop IPA, explaining the style today as “freshly picked hops, rushed from farm to brewery”. In past interviews, they’ve stated that the fresh hops are “fast tracked…picked, dried and shipped within 7 days of the fields”, though not necessarily added to a beer within 7 days as they brew multiple batches during its season. Note: This stance and timing may have changed in more recent times.

That’s all the time I’d like to spend on that topic as it’s not the point of this post, but good fodder. The important question is, why can’t we find Wet Hopped beers as much anymore? But first, let’s hit on why we could find them in places like the Midwest 5-10 years ago.

Why Wet Hops Thrived

If I’m correct and the Wet-Hopped IPA peaked in consumer enthusiasm somewhere around 2014-2016, the logic would include the fact that classic West Coast & American IPAs were at or near their euphoric peak. By that, I don’t mean their all-time high in sales, but more so their rate of growth, irrational consumer behavior, and unsustainable spending (time and money) on craft beer as a hobby/interest.

During this top of the market, brewers were still hanging onto a lot of tradition, mostly using the four ingredients of beer. Wet hops provided a natural supercharge in the form of essential oils that are otherwise lost when hops are dried and preserved. By creating an occasion around the annual hop harvest with a beer release that uses an ingredient only available once per year, Wet-Hopped IPAs gain a mystique for craft beer enthusiasts and brewers to romanticize over.

In 2017, we decided to make our first Wet-Hopped IPA at Revolution Brewing and if you look at the chart above, we were late in timing the market. The beer was called Farm to Fist and more video &. storytelling was put behind it than any beer we had made up until then. Using fresh Chinook that made its way from Michigan’s Hop Head farms to our fermenter in Chicago in under 10 hours, the result was the best IPA that I’ve ever tasted from our brewery in my 7 years. Yet we struggled to move 100 cases of it, with employees eventually gobbling up more than half of the yield I believe. The beers was a success, but the sales were a fail.

So Why Did Wet-Hopped IPAs Lose Interest?

Farm to Fist not only didn’t sell well, but it was the most expensive IPA we’d ever made due to the cost, quantity, and inefficiency of using Wet-Hops. It was never meant to be a money maker, but was hoped to be a way to get our hardcore fans to the Taproom to celebrate this pinnacle of hop brilliance. The process is also built around a training and educational moment for brewers, kind of like a hands-on equivalent to going to a conference including a much needed break from the typical day-to-day.

Something bigger was happening by 2017 though that had distracted beer fans on their IPA quest and it was indeed the New England-style IPA. Now I’m not a Hazy Doomer™ like some, but the flavors being created through biotransformation by combining yeast strains like London III & British V with the next wave of tropical-fruit driven hops was understandably able to bury interest in the nuances of wet hops.

Another less-talked-about variable has been the rise of the Oktoberfest from US craft breweries. While always a component of craft beer, lead by the likes of Sam Adams, making an Oktoberfest wasn’t an automatic for all craft breweries a decade ago like it is today. Now, this time of year which overlaps with hop harvest is often complimented by some kind of Oktoberfest celebration that is more intuitive and welcoming to casual craft beer fans looking to embrace the time of year and check that seasonal box.

Given the amount of story-telling efforts that can be needed to properly build sufficient excitement for a Wet-Hopped IPA, and their costs, Oktoberfests probably have had a bigger payoff to a wider community. But like most things these days, there’s resistance there as well as we are likely seeing more Oktoberfest come online than the market can handle. How many do you really need on wide-reaching stores shelves?

Is There A Future for Wet-Hopped IPAs?

Thankfully everything cycles, as I love to remind folks constantly. We’ve seen more classic leaning IPAs coming back into the fold since COVID began, balancing out Hazy IPAs which have struggled to feel as “new” recently. As a result, Wet-Hop IPAs have a chance to re-rise back into the fold, beyond just their Pacific Northwest birthplace, and re-invigorate an IPA focused brewery who is able to use social media and video to make their fans invested in the process and eager to show up for a release party. If my experience seeing a crowded Taproom at Hop Butcher gulping down those fresh, wet Cashmere hops from Hop Head Farms is any indication, there’s something there, we just need to look at it from the right lens.

Let’s end things with a series of what-ifs just for fun:

• What if breweries used the Wet Hop IPA process more as a relationship and friendship building exercise not only with their fans, but with their most loyal hop farm partner(s) by including them in the story-telling, people behind it all, and promotion? Great partnerships can lead to increased flexibility on the business end, which helps both parties in the long run.

• What if hop farms made more of a marketing (less of a sales) push of their own to help facilitate the 24-hour process, combining orders with nearby breweries for efficient transportation, and facilitating the creation of more of these beers for the good of the energy they provide to the craft scene.

• What if State Craft Brewers Guilds centralized all the release information for all the Wet-Hop IPA releases of their members and made their own marketing push behind it to get their local community out to Taprooms and Beer Bars featuring these ultra fresh IPAs.

• What if beer fans understood the brutal costs and inefficiency, and thus were willing to tag on an extra $4-5 for a 4-pack/6-pack to make these a little more financially viable for the brewery.

Left to Righ: Nick Conti (Taproom Manager at Hop Butcher), Jude La Rose (Co-Founder of Hop Butcher), Doug Veliky, Rob Salitore (Regional Sales Mgr at Hop Head Farms)

Wet Hop IPAs are an excuse to bring awesome people together and they sure showed up at Hop Butcher that Friday. Create your own Fresh Produce in 2024, look at it from a new lens, put the work in, and personally invite people out. The good vibes will come naturally.