If you want to experience the citrus notes of Cascade or Amarillo, the pine of Simcoe, or the passion fruit and lychee of Citra, you visit your neighborhood brewery or beer shop. But where else beyond the category of beer could you enjoy the sensory riches of hops? Look closely, and you just might find them in your next Gin and Tonic or Martini.

There’s a niche subcategory of gin made with hops that’s tiny and quiet but thriving. There are gins with characteristics that build a bridge between spirits and beer, offering beer lovers a welcoming access point into a potentially new favorite beverage. There are also gins that explore what else hops can do, like highlighting the rich aromatic bouquets of classic gin profiles.

It may seem so natural to use hops in gin that it’s a wonder more distilleries haven’t been doing it all along. Hops are flowers, after all, just like many of the ingredients in gin, and they’re used for the same bittering and flavoring purposes as other botanicals. The results, however, are far from being so standard or obvious.

The Aha Moment of Hops in Gin

For some distillers, hops are simply another botanical they’re interested in experimenting with. That’s how Hopped Gin came to be for Smugglers’ Notch Distillery in Vermont, where president and co-owner Jeremy Elliott says they launched the staple a decade ago. For the United Kingdom’s Bath Distillery and their Hopped Rhubarb Gin, that intrigue was specifically inspired by beer.

“The idea to hop a gin came from our ongoing curiosity about the crossover between the brewing and distilling worlds,” says Luke Archer, head distiller at The Bath Distillery. “Hops have such a dynamic aromatic profile, and we saw an opportunity to bring something genuinely unique to the gin category. At its heart, gin is all about botanical expression, and we wanted to explore what hops could bring when treated with the same care we give to more traditional ingredients.”

Tamworth Garden White Mountain Gin

Jennifer Bakos

Head distiller Matt Power felt a similar pull at Tamworth Distilling. He studied organic chemistry as a graduate student at the University of Washington and applied it to exploring hops’ chemical profiles as he learned about beer. Upon returning to New Hampshire, Steven Grasse recruited him for Tamworth.

Grasse is the brains behind Hendrick’s Gin and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum; he says he essentially bought the town of Tamworth, New Hampshire, to “create a test kitchen” for spirits. “I think we have the finest gin in the entire country,” he says.

At the distillery, which opened in 2015, Power translated the IPA boom into gin-spiration, aiming to provide imbibers with a fresh way to experience hops. He discovered wild hops on a farmstead in town and got to work on test batches. “I took the lessons I learned and moved in the direction of bringing big IPA flavors into gin,” Power says. White Mountain Gin was immediately so popular, it became a permanent flagship.

These hopped gins often celebrate the local surroundings of their distilleries, from the crops to the imbibing culture. While Smugglers’ Notch hopped gin is what Elliott calls “more of a gin-drinker’s gin” than a gateway for beer enthusiasts, it still organically reflects Vermont’s craft beer pedigree with the mere inclusion of hops.

Another one of the country’s richest beer scenes, Colorado, shines through the Mountain Hopped Gin from Wood’s High Mountain Distillery in Salida. Two years after opening the distillery, founder PT Wood says a friend working on a hop farm asked if he wanted extra hops, which he’d actually have to help harvest.

“I left with 40 pounds of fresh Cascade hops,” Wood recalls. “I got back to the distillery and thought, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ We’ve always really been Colorado ingredient-centric; a lot of Colorado distillers are. Hops are definitely one of the things we grow quite a bit of in Colorado.”

Wood experimented with a hopped whiskey, but the epiphany came with hops as a gin botanical. Similarly, the Surrey Hops gin from Nibbs Spirits is an homage to the local hops grown in Surrey, England, explain founders Richard and Nicki Sharman. Their home even backs onto an old hop field where wild hops still grow.

Of course, a hopped gin also feels like an organic extension for a brewery. While discontinued, Houston’s 8th Wonder Brewery once offered one. Tree House Brewing Company in Massachusetts is known for its boundary-pushing explorations of hop character; fittingly, one of the spirits they produce is Hildegard von Bingen hopped gin.

But few breweries are more iconic for their utilization of hops than Delaware’s Dogfish Head. The brewery opened in 1995 and started distilling in 2002. Whole Leaf Gin debuted in 2015. “We wanted to do a spirit that aligned with the process of brewing our continually-hopped ales and figured gin would be the best spirit to showcase the flavor of hops,” says head distiller Darren Bobby.

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Choosing, Sourcing and Using Hops in Gin

For distillers like Wood, the variety of hops he landed on to hop gin was a happy accident. Cascade hops were what his friend had left over that first year, and they happened to sing in his gin with their citrus and floral qualities. The finished product works so well that Wood hasn’t wanted to rock the boat by experimenting with other varieties.

“Gin’s incredibly fickle,” he says. “Every time you change one botanical, it can flip the entire profile onto another botanical, so you don’t want to mess with flavor levels once it’s dialed in.” These days, Wood sources his Cascade hops from Billy Goat Hop Farm in Montrose, Colorado, a favorite among brewers.

Cascade seems to play well with gin across the board. “We experimented with a lot of hops,” Elliott says. “We settled on Cascade because we like the citrus and floral notes. At the time, we were growing them on our property at the distillery. We’ve moved across the street and [the land] belongs to those owners now, but we’re still able to get those hops.”

British-grown Cascade hops also factor in alongside Jester hops in The Bath Distillery’s gin. Jester counters Cascade with deeper tropical and stone fruit characteristics with a hint of blackcurrant. Elsewhere in the UK, the Sharmans use Cascade, Fuggle and Farnham White Bine hops, which are especially evocative of English hop-growing history.

“We have been told the Farnham White Bine is a very old hop used many years ago and is allegedly the grandfather of the Goldings hop used in brewing today,” Richard Sharman says. “[It’s] been rejuvenated in brewing now…and we used this hop due to the local connection.”

Tamworth is a bit of an outlier, using a blend of Amarillo, Centennial and Citra hops. When making that IPA connection, Power clarifies that their hop profile is more New England than West Coast. “No bitterness, just big, juicy flavors,” he says. Bitterness at gin’s higher proof, he explains, can be overwhelming. The three hops bring a balance of green, fresh notes alongside orange, apricot, grapefruit, lemon, lime and evergreen.

Different distillers take different approaches to actually getting hops into their gins. The goal is the same — to get as much hop aroma into the spirit as possible without much bitterness. How this is achieved depends on the hop variety, the gin and each distiller’s process. At Smugglers’ Notch and Wood’s High Mountain Distillery, Elliott and Wood place hops in their gin baskets. These are added to stills so as the distillate passes through them as vapors, they gather all the aromas before they’re condensed back into liquid. Both found macerating, or soaking the hops directly in the still with the liquid, yielded an unpleasant amount of bitterness.

At The Bath Distillery, Archer vapor-infuses the distillate with a “small portion of the hops in the botanical basket to draw out their more delicate aromatic oils. Then, post-distillation, we lightly steep additional hops in the finished spirit — a bit like a dry-hop, but carefully controlled in both temperature and time,” Archer says. This dual approach results in both floral, fruity top notes as well as the right amount of green, earthy bitterness, which rounds out the gin’s mouthfeel.

Bobby also hops Dogfish Head’s gin at multiple stages, with an overnight maceration and hops in the gin basket. “We wanted to make sure the gin mimicked our process of continually hopping our ales,” he says.

It’s Official: Hopped Gin Is In

Across this board of varying profiles, from more classic London-dry approaches, to rhubarb, to IPA-inspired, there’s a hopped gin for every taste: traditional gin connoisseurs seeking a subtle update, gin fans interested in unique and new-to-them flavors, and beer lovers curious about the world of gin. Depending on how distillers manipulate them, hops can act as a member of the gin-botanical ensemble or can take center stage with bolder tropical, pine or citrus notes you’d find in an ale.

When you get your hands on a hopped gin, sip it neat to get acquainted with its profile. Whether discreet or more intense, it promises something different for even the most seasoned gin drinker. When you start mixing it into cocktails, there’s good reason to stick to the classics: They still allow the gin’s notes to shine through.

The Sharmans, Elliott, Power and Grasse all like their hopped gins in a G&T. Wood loves it in a dry Martini with a lemon twist and says the Wood’s High Mountain Distillery tasting room also puts it in a spicy Gimlet with lime juice, jalapeño-infused simple syrup and a salted rim. And The Bath Distillery serves up the Make It Rein with peach puree, peach bitters, sugar and Champagne. Archer also recommends a “Hop Collins, essentially a Tom Collins made with Hopped Rhubarb Gin, lemon, sugar and soda.” Elliott agrees, and shared a recipe for a Smugglers’ Notch Hop to It, their take on a classic Tom Collins.