So, what do you know about wet hops?
Every year during late summer, for a few short weeks, wet hops are picked from the vine and go straight to the brewery. No processing. No pellets. No freezing. No waiting. Just green, sticky, intensely aromatic hops, brewed within hours of being harvested.
The problem for us: almost none of that happens in the Bay Area. It happens 600+ miles north, in the hop fields of Oregon and Washington. So if we wanted wet hops in Oakland, someone had to go get it.
Where It Started
When Original Pattern opened in 2018, we were a very small operation but wet hops had already caught our attention. We brewed our first wet hop beer in 2019 with 100 pounds of Mosaic hops.
Getting them to Oakland, though, was a big logistical hurdle for a new brewery. That first year we were fortunate enough to have another brewery from the Bay Area who was driving up to get wet hops offer to pick some up for us. This small act of generosity and collaboration was the inspiration for the future of our wet hop program.
The Wet Hop Carpool
The Pacific Northwest grows the vast majority of America's hops, concentrated around Yakima, Washington and Oregon's Willamette Valley. During harvest, tap lists up there fill with wet hop beers for a few electric weeks. Down here, we'd just get to hear about it. And the FOMO was real.
So over the next few years more Bay Area breweries started taking turns making the run. One brewery with one van would make the long round trip drive to bring the hops back to be split several ways and we were able to do multiple wet hop beers each year with multiple breweries doing runs to get the wet hops. In those first few years Ghost Town, Barebottle and Del Cielo all picked up wet hops for us. In 2020, 2021 and 2022 we brewed wet hop beers with Mosaic and Strata. It became a sort of unofficial wet hop carpool, and it worked! But what if we could make the program bigger?
Our Turn to Drive
As Original Pattern grew, so did our capacity to help. In 2023, we made our first wet hop pickup ourselves (and we picked up hops for other Bay Area breweries in the carpool). The following year in 2024 we made two trips to pick up wet hops and we expanded the number of wet hop beers we brewed from two to four adding Citra and Simcoe into the mix. We also hosted our first Wet Hop Celebration in the Tasting Room that year: mixed 4 packs and flights so people could taste the varieties side by side.
It was busy. Really busy. And it made one thing obvious, the Bay Area wanted more of this. So in 2025 we expanded our wet hop program again and brewed six different wet hop beers adding Amarillo and Krush.
The Idea That Changed Everything
Every year we'd drive north and watch brewery after brewery build entire tap lists around the harvest. Then we'd come home, and there just wasn't much of that here. The hops existed. The demand existed. The missing piece was access.
Other brewers started telling us the same thing: we wish we could brew wet hop beers also.
That's when we asked the obvious question, if we're already making the trip, why not just get enough hops for everyone? The road trip got a lot bigger. So did the idea.
This Year, We're Doing It for Everyone
That question is now the West Coast Wet Hop Harvest Fest - the first event of its kind in the Bay Area. Instead of a handful of breweries hauling hops back for themselves and a few others, we're running the routes for the whole region, so more Bay Area brewers can pour fresh, wet hop beer this fall. In 2026 are excited to be supplying wet hops for over 20 Bay Area breweries!
Right now, we're in the middle of it: five separate 1,200-mile round trips to Oregon and Washington hop farms, the vans loaded to the max, racing the clock to get wet hops into a kettle before they lose what makes them so special.
🚚 Trip Tracker: 2 of 5 complete
We'll update this as each run finishes — check back for the latest.
Follow along here as we finish the last three trips and start brewing. More of this story, what actually makes a wet hop different from the hops in your everyday pint, and who's pouring what at the Fest - it's all coming soon as we tease the lead up to the big celebration Saturday, October 3rd.
