A Very Rare Beer

“There’s an unfortunate disconnect between brewers and their ingredients,” says Phil Markowski, the brewmaster at the Southampton Publick House. It was an ironic statement on this particular day in late-August, since Markowski—who has crafted such ingredient- sensitive brews as his Peconic County Reserve fermented
with local chardonnay grapes and aged in wine barrels—found himself alongside a couple of dozen sweaty humans (including me) picking intoxicating clusters of fresh hops (a beer ingredient, that is) off vines growing alongside an impressive diversity of potted hydrangea at the Mangieri Farm just east of the Laurel post office.

You see, unlike the world’s other popular alcoholic beverage, which is tied to the harvest of grapes, a fierce year-round appetite for beer means brewers generally rely on hops, malt and other ingredients that are dried for storage after they are harvested.

“We’re not really aware of the seasons. We just pick up the phone and order,” Markowski (shown above) told us the night before, at the first annual Hops Picking dinner, where Publick House chef Carl Holfelder had prepared a five-course meal with beer, literally: The dressing for the roasted corn salad was made with Double White Ale; the endives—which went along with the roasted Long Island duck breast—were braised in the 2007 Grand Cru. “Beers from fresh hops are very rare.”

And that novelty is what appeals to the eloquent and meticulous brewmaster, who planned to mix the waxy North Fork buds into a classic English ESB, or extra-strong bitter, using pale malt from the United Kingdom. Most of us pickers donned gloves. But the impulse to touch—not to mention the clamminess that develops under rubber gloves—was just too strong. I rubbed a couple of iridescent bundles in my denuded hands. “You will smell that same exact thing in the beer,” says Christian DeBenedetti, a drinks and travel writer, who has done this before. Dave Brodick, owner of Blind Tiger Ale House in Manhattan’s West Village, has also done this before, in Belgium, and suspects more and more American breweries will be inviting fans to donate their labor to the experience. (In
fact, in our same foodshed, Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown is making such a beer with the help of Kelso of Brooklyn.)

As promised, a short month after the picking, I received two pint-bottles of “Long Island Fresh Hop” beer on my doorstep. When I popped the cap and took my first sip, there was that exotic resiny note in the roof of my mouth that Markowski had predicted: “that chlorophyll, leafy-type character. An oily note. A slickness.” There was also a hint of perishability—the fleeting memory of that hot, sunny morning, and the bittersweet thought that this beer comes but once a year.

The Long Island Fresh Hop beer will be on tap at the Publick House starting in mid-October, and will probably last only a couple of weeks. Southampton Publick House: 52 North Sea Road, Southampton;
631.283.2800; publick.com —Brian Halweil