Cryo me a River

Anyone who pays attention to trends within microbrewing will have noticed in recent years the explosion in variety of proprietary hop products. I don't think these assorted extracts and powders and boosters were ever meant to have a consumer-facing role, but brewers seem to love them, and love letting us know that they've used them. Does that get them a discount from the supplier? I wouldn't be surprised.

For my part, I can't help wondering if these enhancers actually enhance the beers in any real way. I've certainly never identified any pattern among them: which ones to look out for and which ones aren't worth the paper their patents were filed on. Rye River, however, has given us an opportunity for some objective evalauation. As "a bit of fun" the brewery made a small batch of its Big Bangin' IPA using Cryo Fresh™ Wet Hops from Yakima Chief, "the new frontier of freshness", designed to produce a just-harvested hop effect which you can deploy year-round. I don't drink enough fresh-hopped beers to put that claim to the test, but I was very interested to find out how this version differs from standard Big Bangin'. So, of course, I tasted them blind.

There's certainly a difference in appearance: one is very slightly hazy while the other is classically crystal clear. My immediate suspicion is the one that was more of a craft operation was left hazy, while the other is clear for the supermarket audience. The hazy boi had a magnificent aroma of pineapple and passionfruit, with a slight background tang of funky silage. All good clean hop fun. The other one has a much plainer smell. It's pleasantly spicy, with a hint of peppercorn and a fainter non-specific tropical fruit behind. Nothing wrong, but it doesn't compete with the other one at all. My initial loose suspicion began to tighten. 

I thought I'd start tasting with the clear one. It's recognisably Big Bangin', which is to say cracker-dry with a more pronounced tropical element than the aroma, turning savoury towards the end, with a rub of white onion. It lacks the intense punchy bitterness on which west coast IPAs built their reputation, but there is a certain acidic kick in the aftertaste which is sufficient to keep it within the style specs. My hazy friend, on the other hand, was strangely malty. I don't know where all the fruit from the aroma went. The hops are mostly doing bitterness here, which is properly west coast but a little disappointing after that fabulous technicolor aroma. Remember the funky silage? It's back in a big way here, balanced against a kind of marmalade or orange sweet side. I guess I was expecting something more New England, given the juice of the aroma, but I was definitely expecting a more intense flavour experience, and since I suspected this of being the cryo one.

And I was wrong. You may already know that from the accompanying photograph, but at time of writing I haven't taken it yet. The stand-out lesson is that standard Big Bangin' from my local Tesco is world class in the aroma stakes, and that's worth the price of admission (less with Clubcard) alone. The cryo stuff does enhance the taste, but not hugely. Importantly, it doesn't enhance the hop flavour, just the bitterness.

My main takeaway here is a new appreciation for standard Big Bangin'. Turns out there's not much that even the boffins at Yakima Chief can do to improve upon it.