hops
Hops, by Greg­PC on Flickr.

Today is the first day of Hop­stock, a cel­e­bra­tion of the Nel­son Hop har­vest.

In what seems just a lit­tle bit like some craft beer ver­sion of the Beau­jo­lais Nou­veau mad­ness, for a very short time twelve bars around town will be show­cas­ing eight new beers brewed with fresh (rather than the usu­al dried) hops. This means that we should be treat­ed to some even more zingy flavours and inter­est­ing aro­mas.

And, in a bla­tant attempt to encour­age you to sam­ple them all, there will be a trail card avail­able. Try all eight beers, get your card stamped, and go into the draw to win some quite good prizes. OK, so you should prob­a­bly spread this out over two or three nights at least — Hop­stock runs until Fri­day so you’ve got some time.

Of course, you don’t have to try all of them. If you had to choose one or two: maybe the Tuatara Cone­head, which last year was very nice; and we’re also quite keen to try the two Townshend/Liberty col­lab­o­ra­tion brews. Between Mar­tin Town­shend’s superb ful­ly-flavoured old­er school style and Lib­er­ty’s hop-dri­ven craft style there should be a pint or two worth savour­ing. But if you can’t decide: just pick one at ran­dom, drink slow­ly, and taste. It’s an expe­ri­ence.

(Also: apolo­gies to any French speak­ers out there for butcher­ing your love­ly lan­guage. But hope­ful­ly you get where we were going with this.)