Brew fest gets Sisters hoppin'

The Pacific Northwest brewing scene is in full bloom, and when the aroma of fresh hops saturated the air around Village Green on Saturday, hundreds of folks flocked to the seventh annual Sisters Fresh Hop Festival.

The festival was hosted by Three Creeks Brewing and the proceeds benefited the American Cancer Society.

The Festival featured unique fresh-hop brews from 25 breweries around the state of Oregon. Each participating brewery had at least one fresh-hop beer.

Hops are the female flowering cones of the hop plant. Depending on the style of beer, hops supply flavor, fragrance and bitterness, which temper malt sweetness. And once a year, in September, regional hops are plucked fresh and added to brew recipes by brewers.

Three Creeks Brewing has a great passion for fresh-hop beers and was excited to be the new hosts for the Festival.

"I think it was a great opportunity for us to reach out to other breweries that haven't been to the festival before in order to get a really well-curated beer list. This year we went really big on our fresh-hop beer and made it at our production plant in Sisters using 120 half-barrel kegs," said head brewer Zach Beckwith,

Three Creeks' fresh hop beer for this season, Conelick'r Fresh Hop Pale, was made with Centennial hops from BC Farms in Woodburn, and those fresh hops went from farm to brew in four hours.

The minute a hop cone is picked off the bine it begins to degrade, so the sooner the brewer can get the cones into the boil or hopback of a brew, the fresher the beer will taste.

That is why fresh-hop beer season is such a fleeting time of year. With such a relatively small window during which the harvest occurs, this is the only time of the year that fresh-hop beers are available.

The Pacific Northwest grows more hops than anywhere else in the world - over 50,000 acres between Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

And most breweries in the region are located within a few hours' drive of a hop farm.

For three years Smith Rock Hop Farm, located in Terrebonne, has provided fresh hops to brewers in Central Oregon. And Miles Wilhelm, co-founder of Smith Rock Hop Farm had a table full of fresh hops that had been picked just a few hours earlier.

"The farm is on 19 acres with the most wonderful views of Smith Rock," Wilhelm said. "The owners, Natalie Hoshaw and Clare Thompson, are farmers at heart. We joined forces because I possess a love of craft beer.

"Our first season we had a harvest of 25 pounds of fresh Cascade and Centennial cones. The entire lot was used by Worthy Brewing of Bend and Wild Ride Brewing of Redmond to create a collaboration fresh-hop beer named Worth Ride."

Crosby Hop Farm located in Woodburn, Oregon, has been harvesting hops for over 100 years. The farm showcased at least four varieties of hops on their table for folks to pick up and rub together in their palms and inhale the subtle differences of each hop variety.

Anna Jenkins and husband Rob from Bend were vigorously rubbing hops together until the hops warmed up, releasing rich hop aromas.

"This is a lot of fun finding out which flavor you might like best in a beer before actually tasting it," Anna said.

It seems that fresh hops blend with other beverages besides beer.

Folks were on line ready to savor some of Bucha Buena's fresh-hop kombucha, an alcoholic kombucha, secondary fermented on oak with wild and saccharomyces yeast cultures for at least 60 days and fresh-hopped with Cascade hops that were grown on site. It's not only tasty, but good for you, too.

Sally Thompson from Redmond smiled as she tasted the unique drink.

"I've never tasted anything like this," she said. "It's really good, especially if you like kombucha."

Volunteers from the American Cancer Society helped with everything from pouring beer to selling raffle tickets. The raffle prizes were donated by local businesses and the proceeds went to the American Cancer Society.

Adding to the fun, the breweries competed for the People's Choice Award - the coveted Golden Bunny. And by the end of the evening tasters found out that their favorite brew and winner of the Golden Bunny award was Conelick'r from Sisters' own Three Creeks Brewing Co.