About this episode

Jake Watt discusses the evolving techniques and ingredients used in Trap Door's award-winning fresh-hopped IPAs.

In both 2024 and 2025, Jake Watt, head brewer at Trap Door in Washougal, Washington, took home gold medals in the GABF fresh hop category for his beer, Fresher Than Fresh. Interestingly, the recipes for each of those beers was quite different—and the recipe for the 2026 edition that he’ll submit this year will see more changes as well. Fresh-hopped beers are a moving target, ephemeral in nature, and making the best possible beers today means using all the things—unkilned cones harvested that morning, Cryo Fresh pellets, flowable hop products, and even a touch of Riwaka here and there. In this episode, Watt shares insights into the iterative changes and evolving ingredients in Trap Door’s medal-winning fresh-hopped beer. Along the way, he touches on: unlocking the best Mosaic character with Krush and Riwaka using deep-cut Cascade with additional thiol character flavor stability in fresh-hopped beers when hot-side hopping taking advantage of fresh-hop season to gain access to specific lots from certain growers focusing on Oregon-grown hops for fresh-hopped beers due to earlier pick windows mechanically chopping fresh cones controlling dilution and pH rise in fresh-hopped beers…

People in this episode

Guest: Jake Watt

Topics covered

• fresh-hopped beers
• brewing techniques
• hop varieties
• award-winning beers
• brewing ingredients
• craft beer

Keywords

• fresh hops
• brewing
• IPAs
• GABF
• craft beer
• brewing techniques
• hop products

Sponsors

G&D Chillers

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Trap Door

Products: Fresher Than Fresh, Cryo Fresh, Riwaka, Mosaic, Cascade

Places: Washougal, Washington

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