What does Arizona taste like?
That’s what you can find out Friday when SunUp Brewing in Phoenix taps its newest beer – Wild Thing IPA, made with Arizona wild hops.
In case you didn’t know, beer is made of four basic ingredients: Water, some type of grain, yeast, and, hops. It’s the hops that provide beer’s characteristic flavors and aromas.
There are many different kinds of hops, but breweries mostly purchase them from the same handful of outlets, which get them from a limited number of hop farms.
The guys at SunUp (including brewmaster Uwe Boer, pictured above), though, recently harvested a bunch of wild hops discovered in northern Arizona, giving them the opportunity to brew a uniquely Arizonan beer.
Wild Thing IPA (6.2% ABV, 80 IBUs) is described as having ‘‘a wonderful aroma of dank fresh-sliced onion and chopped garlic, followed by a wet pine forest floor.’
And the taste? ‘‘The hop bitterness hits the back of the throat with the same onion and garlic flavors but fades to a earthy rich pine flavor as the sip fades.’’
Try it for yourself on Friday.
