Out in Yakima, tractors are dragging mountains of cones off the bine, the kilns are roaring, and the valley air smells like resin, grass clippings, and citrus oil all at once. Down in Oregon’s Willamette, the fields are buzzing with the same manic harvest energy, farm crews moving fast before the cones wilt, brewers idling on the edges of fields like kids waiting for a parade to start. This is the moment—the weeks when hops are alive, pulsing with oils and sunlight, barely hours from bine to brewhouse. And so, Peaks & Pints answers in kind: five fresh hop pours that taste like dirt still clings to the cones, like citrus just cracked open on the picking line, like Yakima and Willamette themselves distilled into glass. Bright, green, fleeting—this is fresh hop season in full throat, third Friday running, and every pint is proof you can drink the harvest as it happens.
Peaks & Pints Third Fresh Hop Friday Flight
Varietal Beer Co. Moxee Fresh Simcoe Pale Ale
4.8% ABV | Fresh Hop Pale Ale | Sunnyside, WA
Sunnyside’s Varietal Beer Co. doesn’t just brew Moxee Fresh, they all but baptize it in the fields—stuffing Sauve & Son’s wet Simcoe cones into the kettle before the dust has even settled on the tractor. At just 4.8 percent, it’s lean and luminous, a pale ale that thrums with citrus-pine voltage: lemon spark, resin bite, a whisper of orchard grass still clinging to the cones. Light enough to drink like river water, alive enough to remind you that harvest is less recipe than ritual, this is Simcoe at its most primal—green, dank, sun-warmed, and gone before you can even think about pouring another.
Fort George Fresh IPA (2025)
6.4% ABV | Fresh Hop IPA | Astoria, OR
Astoria’s Fort George doesn’t just brew Fresh IPA, they practically sprint it from bine to can—over 500 pounds of just-picked Strata from Goschie Farms jammed into the hop back, chased by Cascade and Eclipse until the whole thing glows like citrus lightning over the Columbia. At 6.4 percent, it’s clean pilsner malt beneath a tidal wave of grapefruit, strawberry flicker, and dank tropical haze, the kind of beer that feels like it was brewed at harvest sunrise and poured before sunset. It’s fast, it’s fierce, it’s Strata turned into pure voltage—Fort George proving once again that “fresh” should taste like urgency.
Stoup Brewing Strata Fresh Hop Fiend (2025)
6.5% ABV | Fresh Hop IPA | Seattle, WA
Seattle’s Stoup Brewing doesn’t tiptoe into harvest—they dive face-first into Roy Farms’ Strata fields, hauling back a green avalanche and stuffing it into the kettle until the whole brewhouse smells like strawberry patch meets passionfruit grove. Strata Fresh Hop Fiend is exactly what it says on the tin: 6.5 percent of citrus-bright, melon-laced, resin-cracked chaos that pulses with orchard funk and lands like grapefruit rind dipped in pine. It’s lush, unruly, green in all the best ways—an IPA so fresh you can almost hear the Yakima dirt still clinging to the cones.
Double Mountain Killer Green (2025)
7.3% ABV | Fresh Hop IPA | Hood River, OR
Hood River’s Double Mountain returns with Killer Green, their annual ode to Crosby Farms’ just-picked Centennial, and it still hits like a forest rave under a neon orchard blaze. Brewed on a backbone of pilsner and wheat, this bruiser folds in Centennial, Strata, Brewer’s Gold, and Citra until the glass surges with ripe orange, pomelo, candied peel, and dank cannabis haze. It pours raw-honey bright, smells like blood orange tangled in pine, and tastes resinous, juicy, and bitter-sharp all at once—IPA as electric hymn, as balanced chaos, as proof that “fresh” can still feel feral. Killer Green doesn’t whisper; it roars and grins while it does it.
Hetty Alice Fresh Hop Redd
6.5% ABV | Fresh Hop Red Ale | Portland, OR
Portland’s Hetty Alice brews Fresh Hop Redd like autumn dressed in neon: a malt robe stitched in caramel and toasted grain, then lit from within by just-picked Centennial from Crosby Farms, with Cascade and Chinook crashing the party. The pint pulses with earthy petrichor, citrus peel snap, even a flicker of melon before the forest edge of resin and pine bites down. It’s both comfort and jolt, hearth and harvest field—a red ale jolted alive by the green thrum of fresh hops, proof that crimson and cone can waltz in the same glass without missing a beat.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
