Flying Dog Brewery Announces Field Notes Pale Ale

Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, Maryland has announced the release of a new American Pale Ale with six hop varietals.

Field Notes Pale Ale is brewed with the brewery's "six favorite hops – Galena, Vojvodina, Nugget, Crystal, Glacier and Chinook – from this year's harvest," according to a release from Flying Dog.

All of the hops were sourced from Washington's famed Yakima Valley and hand-selected by Flying Dog's brewers.

The full release from the brewery is below.

About 75% of American hops are grown on a 600,000-acre slice of paradise in Washington State called Yakima Valley. A map of the region reads like a lupulin-laced Candy Land, with places like the Chinook Pass, Fort Simcoe, and Ahtanum Creek. Yakima is under a rain shadow – the Cascade Mountains to the west of the valley shield it from any moist Pacific weather – so the region’s farmers have had generations without much interference from Mother Nature. Hops plants grown in any other location on Earth typically take three years to mature to full yield. In Yakima, they only need two.

Each year, around mid-September, our brewers make the 2,600-mile pilgrimage to touch, smell, and claim first dibs on the best hops as they’re coming right off the fields. Head over to our blog to read about this year's trek, and the classic hop variety that stole the show.

And in hops fields a little closer to home...
2018 marks our second year of a research partnership with the University of Maryland. 

Through a replicated trial of 24 hop varieties grown at UMD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources research facility in Keedysville, we're collecting data on how hops respond to Maryland's unique climate. 

Because there's no better way to analyze an ingredient than putting it in a beer, Field Notes Pale Ale was brewed with our six favorite hops – Galena, Vojvodina, Nugget, Crystal, Glacier and Chinook – from this year's harvest. We're releasing it Saturday at LOCAL RIOT.