Elliott Bay Brewery has just tapped its 2011 Hop Harvest Ale. It is currently on tap at the Burien pub and goes on tap tomorrow (if not sooner) at the West Seattle pub.

Elliott Bay Brewing was the first brewery in King County to earn Certified Organic status from the US Department of Agriculture. For this beer, they used fresh organic Amarillo hops from Gamache Farms.  If you’re keeping score, this is the first year Gamache has grown organic Amarillo hops. That is significant information for us serious hop geeks, especially as it relates to the world of certified organic beer.

As I write this, Mrs. Beerblog is at the Burien pub enjoying a pint of Hop Harvest (pictured below). She reports that it is nothing short of spectacular.

I should note that tomorrow (Saturday, October 8th) is also Elliott Bay’s big Oktoberfest party in West Seattle. Time to drink some freshy-fresh and do some oom-pah-pah music! Expect special food, great beer, and tubas.

Here is what Brooks Gay, the manager at the West Seattle pub told us about the beer.

This Saturday is not only our Oktoberfest celebration but it is also our release of the 2011 Hop Harvest. What makes this batch so special is that instead of dry hopping the beer, we added 44 pounds of Organic Amarillo Hops that had been picked the day before from Darren Gamache’s farm. This is the first year that Gamache farms has grown organic Amarillo hops, and we are the first to get to use them. We ran the whole batch of beer over these freshly picked hops on its way to the fermentor. We didn’t dry hop because we didn’t want to cover up the citrusy earthy of these freshly picked hops. We are very proud and excited to be the first to use organic Amarillo hops!! ABV=6.0 percent. IBU=86

A live report from Yakima station KIMA29 from the hop harvest in September. This reporter seems REALLY into hops. But hey, we probably would be pretty excited to be there too, hop-heads that we are.

And this news story, featuring Chris Miller, head brewer of Snipes Mountain Brewing, explaining why brewers are paying through the nose for hops again this year despite the hop surplus:

(Thanks to Snipes Mountain Brewing for linking to these stories on Facebook.)