Fresh Hopping with Single Hill

Single Hill Brewing in Yakima, Washington, has made a name for itself as a place where brewers like to drink when they’re in town for hop selection, where local hop growers like to drink year-round, and where you’re guaranteed to find a prolific range of fresh-hopped beers during harvest season and beyond. When it is harvest time, Single Hill cofounder and head brewer Zach Turner and his team hop in the van and drive around the valley, picking up whatever hops they’ve heard are being freshly harvested, so they can get them back to the brewery as quickly as possible and brew with them in a number of ways. That includes throwing in some whole cones as well a using their own small-scale pelletizer, making fresh-hop pellets to use that day or soon afterward.

In this 103-minute video course, join Turner and friends as they take a “field trip” into the Yakima Valley to get hops picked that morning, then return to the brewery to utilize those hops in a variety of ways. Along the way, Turner lays out the Single Hill philosophy of brewing fresh-hopped beers, sharing the details of their fresh-hopping techniques developed after many years of experimentation—including his homebrewing days, brewing at Odell, and his years on the technical and quality teams at Yakima Chief before starting Single Hill.