News: October 2009

Great Divide Brewing Company, one of America’s most successful microbreweries, looks to complete its range of seasonal releases with the fall/winter beers Hibernation and Fresh Hop.

Hibernation (8.1% ABV) has been part of the Denver brewery’s winter programme since 1995. The brewers describe it as ‘a robust, dry-hopped English-style strong ale’, with a ‘malty richness balanced with a complex hop profile and a hearty, warming character’.

Fresh Hop (6.1% ABV) is an American-style pale ale brewed with fresh whole-cone hops from the Pacific Northwest. Great Divide contracts a refrigerated truck to drive for two days straight, to deliver a trailerful of just-harvested hops to the Colorado brewhouse.

Brewing with fresh hops requires around five times the volume of a similar amount of dried hops and they impart an intensely grassy hop aroma and citrus hop flavour.