Normally, I don’t expect my personal life and my professional life to intersect. But I recently wrote a review on RateBeer of a beer I’d tasted for the first time. It’s a good example of agreed-upon terminology not really making logical sense.

(On tap at The Poacher in Burlington, Ontario.) I don’t like the terms “wet hopped” and “dry hopped” that the beer industry has settled on. Local Hoption uses fresh (non-dried), i.e., “wet”, hops as an ingredient. It also has the character of a “dry hopped” beer (which just means that hops—either fresh or dried—have been added after the fermentation process). It’s possible this beer is both wet hopped and dry hopped (or, in my own, less-ambiguous, terms, “late hopped using fresh hops”) but I don’t actually know what process was used.

It has some of the grapefruit taste I would normally associate with citra hops, but before it has that normal assertive flavour, all taste “dies” on your tongue, leaving you without a lasting aftertaste. It’s crisp and clean overall, with a bitterness that threatens but fades away before delivering. I like it, but wish it were more successful. It hasn’t quite made up its mind what it wants to be. Nonetheless, I would happily enjoy many pints of this.