Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Now that we are aware that some breweries -- most notably Sierra Nevada -- label certain products as "fresh hop beer" even though every hop in the beer has been dried, beer lovers often ask for clarification on whether a beer has "wet hops", and brewers often label their beers as such.Stop it. STOP IT! Stop using this term "wet hops" which was only invented to give a cover to those who wanted to jump on the fresh hop bandwagon, but for whatever reason, did not want to mess with sticky, rapidly wilting fresh hops. Stop giving cover to people who want to deceive, simply in order to elbow in on a beautiful thing.
I have ranted about this in the past, but let me state again some of the reasons "wet hops" is a ridiculous turn of phrase. First of all, what other fresh agricultural product do you have to call "wet" to make sure someone knows you don't think it has been dried? If you go to the grocery store and ask for fresh parsley, or fresh ginger, or fresh garlic, they will point you to the produce aisle. Try telling them you don't want wet parsley, you want fresh-dried parsley. And by the way, where is the wet ginger? I'm making a stir-fry, should I put in dried garlic, fresh garlic, or wet garlic? I see that you have fresh cucumbers and fresh lettuce on sale, but I was really hoping to make my salad with wet vegetables, not fresh-dried ones.
How about fresh fish? Can that be dried? Milk? Eggs? Better ask for wet fish, wet eggs, and of course wet milk. On Valentine's Day you better remind the florist that you want wet roses, because a dried bouquet might convey the wrong message even if the vase says the flowers are fresh.
Furthermore, freshly-picked hop cones are not wet anyway. Think of the roses I just mentioned -- they are vibrant and tender, but they aren't wet, and neither are hops. You can't squeeze water out of them -- a potato is wetter than a hop.
Finally, crowdsourced wisdom at Twitter brings up this question: what do you call it when you dry hop with wet hops?
Now, it is certainly no sin to have a mix of fresh and dried hops in a beer -- that's how most fresh hop beers are done: dried hops for bitterness and fresh hops later in the process for aroma and flavor. But to call a beer with only dried hops a "fresh hop beer" is completely unjustifiable. Yes, the first dried hops of the season are the freshest ones you can use, and should make delicious beer. However, the flavors in those beers are not what people expect when they ask for a fresh hop beer. Most brewers that I have asked about this subject were completely dumbfounded to hear that some fresh hop beers contained only dried hops -- it had simply never occurred to those honest folk that anyone would tell such a ridiculous lie.
Go forth with the awareness that there are deceptively labeled fresh hop beers out there, and spread the word. But do not give in to the falsehood. Don't use the term "wet hop", and push back when you hear someone use it. If you need clarification about a fresh hop beer, ask whether it has some hops that haven't been dried.
