You can see it in customers’ eyes when they walk into the brewery and scan the beer list. A twinkle arrives when they land on a small green sign next to the beer name and style: “fresh hop.”

Starting in late August at Single Hill Brewing in Yakima, Washington, and running through October, the bounty of the annual hop harvest is on display through vibrant pints that showcase beer’s most famous ingredient.

There are well-known seasonal offerings in the beer space — Oktoberfest lagers that arrive in autumn, summer ales for the hotter months, and bocks in spring. Fresh hop ales are perhaps the most exciting seasonal offering in beer. They have a roughly six-week release window and are largely geographically dependent. The beers are vibrant and zesty, brimming with bright green flavors.

What is fresh hop beer?

Fresh hop ale is the result of the Northern Hemisphere hop harvest season, which occurs in the United States from late August to early October, largely in the Pacific Northwest.

Hops are small strobiles that grow vertically on bines, or long stems. These perennials require a specific environment to grow cones; they thrive between the 50th and 40th parallels but can grow as low as the 30th parallel (in both hemispheres). Hops add bitterness, aroma, and flavor to beer.

While most hops that are harvested will be dried and processed to be used in beers around the world later, fresh hop ales use hop cones that have just been picked from the bines in the field and are added to the brew kettles within minutes or hours of being harvested. Some breweries use the term “wet hop” interchangeably with fresh hop, and cones are typically used within 24 hours of harvest.

“Beers made from freshly harvested hop cones, much like food made with fresh produce, deliver a unique profile that can’t be replicated by processed hops,” says Tristan Barnes, head brewer of Trap Door Brewing in Vancouver, Washington.

Making these beers in the Pacific Northwest, he says, requires heading out to farms in Yakima or the Willamette Valley in Oregon, picking up hundreds of pounds of hop cones, driving them back to the brewery, and adding them to wort or finished beer.

At Single Hill, the brewers take their proximity to the fields seriously. When brewers head to Yakima farms to select hops and pick dried lots to use in their beers in the coming year, they also visit the brewery and sample dozens of beers featuring the just-harvested hops, tasting the plant in its true form.

“Fresh hops do taste different, and I think because most people don’t come to the Pacific Northwest in September and October, they’ve never really tasted these things,” says Jeff Alworth, author of The Beer Bible. “Like anything else in hops, that green character is a little bit like a chemical compound that you have to learn to identify and appreciate. Fresh hops have that green quality. And when you’re talking about an IPA, there’s a whole lot of intensity going on.

How can you try a fresh hop ale?

There are ways to taste versions of these beers without traveling to Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, where most of the country’s hops are grown. Small breweries with hop farms in Michigan, Vermont, New York, and Colorado offer their own fresh hop pours.

Perhaps the best-known fresh hop ale in the U.S. is Sierra Nevada Celebration IPA. In distinctive red packaging, it arrives on shelves in October and lasts through the end of the year. The beer uses fresh Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook hops, often the first picked in the season, just after Labor Day.

The brewery uses tractor-trailers (each can hold up to 150 bales) to haul the just-picked hops to its breweries in Chico, California, and Mills River, North Carolina. The hops are added to brew kettles within 48 to 72 hours of harvest to make the 6.8% ABV IPA.

Sierra Nevada has been brewing Celebration since 1981 and in its current form since 1983. With a caramel-orange hue, a thick head of foam, and aromas that burst with vibrant orange and pine, the beer has a cult-like following, and its release is met with anticipation every year.

In an era of gimmicks in the beer industry where offbeat ingredients are added to recipes, there is a purity and appreciation of the harvest that is present in fresh hop ales.

“It’s been a highlight of my career to be part of and witness the innovation in application brewers have taken to express this pure ingredient in their beer,” says Barnes. “Each application delivers a unique profile to these beers. This is craft beer ingenuity at its finest.”

Fresh hop beers to try

The majority of fresh hop beers are served on draft only. Most breweries in the Pacific Northwest (or near a hop farm) should have at least one on tap, but call ahead or scour social media to see who has the vibrant ales on offer.

Sierra Nevada Celebration IPA

This annual release is the easiest to get nationally and is a vibrant showcase of fresh hops and brewing ingenuity. Big aromas of orange peel and pine, it suits the colder months with a warming ABV and full body. It’s the IPA that IPA lovers crave.

Bale Breaker Fresh Hop Top Cutter

The Washington state brewery is located among acres of hop fields, so it would make sense that they would take their flagship IPA, Top Cutter, and give it the fresh hop treatment. Big vibrant hop aromas and a true taste of place.

Russian River Hop Time Harvest Ale

The famed California brewery is known for its hop-forward ales like Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig. Once a year, the brewery creates Hop Time, a harvest ale with fresh hops harvested from farms near the brewery in Sonoma County.

Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere

Another offering from Sierra Nevada, this limited bottling has some of the very first harvest using Centennial hops. Floral grapefruit aromas and a strong hop punch make this an exciting seasonal expression.

Single Hill Fresh Hop Lateral

In Yakima, Washington, Single Hill Brewing has become a destination for visiting brewers and beer fans to get seemingly endless pours of fresh hop ales. Lateral is an annual release, a fresh hop version of its main West Coast IPA. This year, it features fresh “Perrault Farms Krush and Haas Yakima Golding Dolcita. It’s topped off with Fresh AF Haas Dolcita and Perrault Krush & Talus.”

Four Star Farms Friends from Boston

This farm brewery in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts has its own hop fields. The brewery produces several fresh hop beers during the harvest season. This year, they collaborated with Samuel Adams on Friends from Boston. Four Star says it is “ brewed with our Easy Rider hops and freshly picked 2025 Cascade. Bursting with bright, fresh flavor.”