North Peak Brewing Company’s new Hoodoo Midwest Wet-Hop IPA hits the shelves this weekend and brings with it a rare opportunity: the chance to taste a truly fresh-made hop beer.

Because the beer is made exclusively from green hops grown on Old Mission Peninsula, the brewing process and distribution can happen immediately after harvest, which makes possible an IPA, with fresher, grassier undertones than the average IPA.

“The beer, when it’s fresh and drunk within a month of being brewed, is at its optimum,” explains Mike Hall, master brewer for North Peak. “Over time, it’ll slowly mature. It’ll stay as a good IPA, but it’s definitely a beer you want to drink fresh.”

The brewers made 950 gallons of it, which equates to more than 400 cases, Hall says.

The hops are grown locally through the Old Mission Hop Exchange, a group of farmers that produces hops on about 25 acres and supplies breweries all over the state. But those hops are also brewed locally, just behind the Jolly Pumpkin restaurant near Bowers Harbor.

That’s a different approach for the Hop Exchange. Usually, its hops are sent up the road to a processing plant five minutes from the farm, where they’re turned into pellets for long-term storage, shipping and year-round use.

Not so this time.

After a machine stripped the hops from their vines and trellis ropes, the hops were loaded in bags and shipped directly to the brewery, where they were poured into the brew with all their green, somewhat bitter flavoring.

Brewers don’t have to use local hops to achieve the green bitterness of a wet-hop beer, but it makes for a better product and a better price, says Hall.

“[When brewers want green hops, they] buy them from out west and actually fly them in, and it’s very expensive,” Hall says. “They’re four to five times the weight they are when they’re processed.”

Although fresh, green hops and their resulting fresh beers are highly prized today, hops came to fame for their ability to preserve beers. The IPA moniker means India Pale Ale, so named during the late 18th-century heyday of the East India Trading Company, when the thirsty English living in India discovered that well-hopped pale ales better withstood the long voyage than other styles of beer styles.

North Peak’s Hoodoo name, however, expands those boundaries; its name comes from the traditional folk magic that blends African, Native American and European customs.

Want to see if you fall under its spell? Hoodoo brew will be available this weekend at North Peak Brewing Company, Mission Table and Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Traverse City, as well several bars and beer and liquor stores around Michigan. Six-pack quantities are limited, but many local beer and liquor stores are allowing customers to reserve ahead.

See what goes into the wet-hop process: Click on the video above.