Beers that taste like bud — and we don’t mean Budweiser 

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Craft breweries have been experimenting with hops since the dawn of their industry.

First it was the bitter West Coast IPAs of the early 2000s, popularized by Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and Green Flash’s Palate Wrecker. Massive doses of resinous, piney hops like Citra, Centennial, and Columbus became the hallmark of an in-vogue beer.

That period gave way to the craze for juicy, hazy New England IPAs.

Now, some breweries are honoring another trait of heritage IPA hops: they taste like weed. Breweries are pumping out beers that play up the tones of cannabis found in hops. The term for these ales is “dank,” and the pot puns are a-plenty.

There is CananDANKua from Other Half Brewing, and Skunk from Three Heads Brewing, and Sticky Trees from Pressure Drop Brewing, to name a few. These beers are heavy on grassy, earthy notes that emulate the flavor of fresh bud.

“It’s been in my experience that a lot of people partake in both,” said Geoff Dale, co-owner of Three Heads, referring to beer and bud. “If you’re going to smoke weed and drink a beer, it’s nice to have a beer that tastes a little bit like the weed.”

Hops and cannabis taste and smell alike because they’re botanical siblings. Both belong to the small Cannabaceae family of plants that share some of the same flavor-producing compounds.

Myrcene, for example, carries a flavor that is earthy and peppery with just a hint of tropical fruit and is abundant in both hops and weed. Meanwhile, limonene, which is the chemical that gives hops like Citra a zesty tone, is also common in cannabis.

Pump up the presence of those flavors in the beer and the dank notes follow.

“I think it’s a lot like how you pair beer or wine with food,” Dale said. “You want it to either complement, to run parallel, or be perpendicular in augmenting the flavor.

Since hops are cousins of weed, it only makes sense that you’re going to get something that’s parallel.”

DRINK THESE DANKS:

click to enlarge

Little Juice Coupe from Three Heads Brewing
Little Juice Coupe is a dank beer in the midst of an identity crisis. It’s neither a West Coast IPA nor a New England IPA, and it isn’t a traditional lager. It’s an India pale lager (IPL) with juicy notes of ripe tropical fruit and earthy lemon rind, culminating in a crisp, delicately bitter finish.
CananDANKua from Other Half Brewing
Other Half’s raison d’être has been to unabashedly push the boundaries of reason and physics to cram as many hops as they can into a beer. This is one such experiment. Trendy Idaho 7 hops blast through with jammy notes of citrus, contrasting seamlessly with the grounded earthy notes of Columbus hops.
Sticky Trees from Pressure Drop Brewing
If brewer Karl Kolbe sought to capture the magic of a bygone era of West Coast IPAs and showcase a love of cannabis, he succeeded with Sticky Trees. This is a shamelessly bitter, dank, resinous beer that is ripe with challenging notes of pepper, citrus rind, and earth. It lingers on the palate, enticing you to drink just a little bit more, and then lingers a bit more, enticing you to…you get the idea.
Hemp Double-IPA from K2 Brothers Brewing
Penfield’s brewery, K2, typically begins pouring this beer around 420, and as gimmicky as it sounds, is one of the best IPAs K2 has ever brewed. Packed with actual hemp buds, it’s a grassy, somewhat vegetal beer contrasted mainly by the oft-overpowering spicy resin of Simcoe hops.

Gino Fanelli is a staff writer for CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].