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First there was Beaujolais nouveau. Now comes beer nouveau.

The end of the growing season has been celebrated by everyone from apple growers to winemakers, but lately brewers have started marking the renewal of their own annual cycle, with beers that are brewed with hops picked only a few hours before. Called "fresh hop," "wet hop" or harvest beers, they begin appearing in late September, typically on tap and lasting only until the kegs run dry.

These beers are the latest expression of brewers' obsession with hops, the sticky green cones of the Humulus lupulus plant that give beer its bitter flavor. Classically, beer has four main ingredients — the others are water, yeast and grain, typically barley. Before hops, brewers had balanced the sweet taste of malted barley with herbs including yarrow, coriander and ginger. Around 900 years ago they began adding hops, which imparted flavor and served as a preservative.

Much more recently, hops became a rallying point for U.S. craft-brewers — a movement that took off in the 1980s as a reaction to the big-brewery beers that critics dismissed as too light, too watery and too stingy on the hops.

The hop infatuation has resulted in a game of chicken among brewers, who have continued their effort to out-bitter the next guy — as evidenced by beer labels that boast mixed hops, extra hops or triple hops.

But for a few months in the fall, brewers stop worrying about more hops and focus instead on fresh hops. When first plucked from its stalk, a hop flower is green and about 60 percent water by weight. For brewing purposes, hops are usually dried and refrigerated, or made into pellets that resemble rabbit food.

Wet-hop beers use flowers that have been picked just hours before, so they still possess the volatile flavors that are lost during processing. Brewers compare beer made with these moist hops with a meal cooked with just-picked herbs — entirely unlike one made with dried oregano and parsley from the back of the pantry.

A fresh-hop beer often, in fact, can be less bitter than a corresponding version with dried hops, and instead is powered by floral, citrus tastes. The retained oils line the inside of the mouth and have a tinge of greenish, vegetal flavors. (Many brewers recommend drinking their wet hops with a glass of water.)

It's easy to taste the difference between a normal brew and a fresh-hop version — though that isn't always a good thing. "If you're not careful you can end up with a beer that tastes like lawn clippings," says Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery.

Fresh-hop beers started popping up about a decade ago when Sierra Nevada brewed its first Harvest Ale. The style attracted other brewers, and there are now several dozen versions available. Sierra now makes three wet-hop beers, including one using "estate grown hops," while Steelhead Brewing Co. in Eugene, Ore., last year made a pair of fresh-hops, "Fugglerama GBP 1" and "Fugglerama GBP 2," with two varieties of Fuggle hops.

There's even a nascent movement among brewers to grow their own: In Kearney, Neb., Trevor Schaben, owner of Thunderhead Brewing, plans on heading out to a hops field 10 miles from his brewpub to pick with a handful of customers.

Brewers who don't have their own hop farm often pay to have fresh hops sent overnight, multiplying their hops tab.

But for calendar-watching beer drinkers, the once-a-year brew is worth the splurge. "It's like being able to get vegetables from the farmer's market," says beer aficionado Richard Sloan, a computer programmer from San Diego. "You better be there, or they're gone."