#ella hops

Harshmellow Mountain: a golden ale with Belgian yeast, aged on oak, with Brettanomyces Bruxelles, then dry-hopped with Ella hops. It’s part of Baerlic Brewing’s Wood Worker series of barrel aged beers. It’s interesting. Harshmellow won bronze at the Oregon Beer Awards in the wood aged sour ales with Brett category. It’s really hard to categorize. It’s not strictly a sour beer. Maybe a bit tart, but not sour sour. The Brett is much more present, it has a musty, spicy scent, maybe a little tropical. The flavor is sort of a lemon and lime thing, almost white wine-y. But there’s a sharpness to it. A sort of gin-y quality. Huh. Very strange. Very intriguing.

To mark Portland and Seattle’s respective beer week festivities, the brewers at Breakside and Fremont Brewing created Back to the Future IPAs. Each beer includes new hop varietals. The Breakside brew was made with Ella and Azacca hops. The combined flavor of these two is all over the place. Breakside's Back to the Future is at once earthy and oniony while also showing off fruity strawberry notes and a light herbal lemon grass tone. It’s pretty out there, but I wasn’t wowed. I was just sort of tickled.