Most brewers and beer lovers love hops and hop aroma. We live in an amazing time with more varieties, better quality and endless combinations to show off this incredible raw material in beer.
Mr. Malt® is proud to partner with the best hop growers and companies to offer an exceptional range of hops and hop products. The brewing process is relatively simple, but the science of brewing and beer is extremely complex & hop aroma science is no exception!
Nevertheless, this blog will attempt to support brewers in selecting and applying hops and hop products based on applied science fundamentals to build beautiful beers whether they be big and bold or refreshing and cold.
Using aroma hops and hopping techniques is intertwined with the craft beer movement & for popularising the resulting hop-forward beer styles amongst consumers. Later additions in kettle, whirlpool, cast, hopback & hopnik, product developments such as enriched pellets & powders and spectacular progress in variety and breeding have contributed to the production of some world class beers and a plethora of styles.
Unfortunately, with great hop aroma comes limited profitability…
Introducing hop aroma has some key challenges:
- Inefficiency-the valuable part for aroma part only makes up 0.5-4% of the hop cone
- Losses-1Kg of hops can absorb ~10Litres of beer
- Diminishing returns-adding more gives you more BUT with less and less efficiently e.g. increase rates from 250g/Hl-2000g/Hl can see % efficiency reduce 10X for some key components
- Side effects- Hop Burn, Hop creep, pH rise/yeast stress
More means more… right?
Up to a point, more aroma hops will produce more hop aroma in the beer but unfortunately there are serious diminishing returns especially in dry hopping. This is highlighted in the graph below.
Brewing is a balancing act & we believe the new flowable range of products provide some great solutions to the challenges listed above.
Both products are designed to boost aroma whilst minimising inefficiency, losses, diminishing returns and negative side effects (listed above).
Flowable and Flexible
Although beers can be made with these products which eliminate dry hop requirements and reduces pellet use, we believe most brewers will find their own balance depending on if they are creating a new range or re-developing existing brands. This means some beers will substitute and save and some will use the products to bolster and boost big bold beers offsetting diminishing returns.
Like any changes in the brewery, structured trials, records and development steps are required to successfully introduce them into the range. In a busy brewery we believe new recipe development is the best starting point.
The challenge for a new recipe is easier as you are not trying to exactly match the attributes of a known (and hopefully loved!) brand. Building this new recipe on tried and tested combinations (e.g. strength, grist and hop variety matching) should make things even easier and allow the brewer to concentrate on the substitute and save or the bolster and boost aspect.
DynaBoost™ and HyperBoost™ are available in your favourite varieties including: Citra®, Simcoe®, Mosaic®, Idaho 7®, Sabro®, Centennial & Chinook.
DynaBoost™-Whirlpool Hop Extract– ~1:10 late hop substitution
HyperBoost™- Oil Boosted Hop Extract-~1:50 late and ~1:100 dry hop
Note-Both products are very flowable and do not need pre heating like some other extracts!
ECO (Energy Conscious, Cost Effective & Operationally Advantageous) Beer
The ECO beer is a recipe theme & should work well with flowable hop products. The idea is to tick off the ECO features as well as creating something tasty and popular with customers.
Energy Conscious – Ingredients and processes that are selected to conciously reduce energy and emission inputs. Non malted adjuncts, short brew cycles, reduced cooling & reduced waste. Flowable hops will help in reducing brew cycles and waste/losses.
Cost Effective- features often align with the above points providing a win-win. Flowable hops can lead to significant incremental savings over time allowing investment elsewhere.
Operationally Advantageous- using processes and ingredients that provide an operational advantage can have knock-on effects such as readily available re-pitching yeast and greater capacity for growth. Flowable hops are operational advantageous as they allow for better utilisation of capacity & product line diversification e.g. 1 IPA brewed split into 3 beer brands with significant differences provided by Flowable hop aroma.
Late hop aroma layering
As late hopping tends to be less wasteful than dry hopping, building a strong late foundation to build on with dry hopping can pay serious dividends. A rough rule of thumb I have seen that boosts aroma whilst retaining harmony is to double the hop charge (T90 weight) the later you hop e.g. 20g/hl Bitter, 40 g/Hl Late, 80g/hl end, 160g/Hl Cast, Hopback/Nik & optional dry hopping.
The CIBD dry hopping course identifies 5 key strategies for reducing losses
- Dynamic systems e.g. recirculation, mixing & hop bed filtration
- Use of a separator (unfortunately scale dependant)
- Combing hop products
- Enriched products
- Late hopping
The flowable products relate to 3 of the 5 strategies! For details visit https://www.cibd.org.uk/
Hazy & juicy styles
Hazy and juicy styles pose a greater challenge as one of the key aspects of these styles is a stable haze (although haze targets vary massively). Protein-polyphenol ratio and the resulting particle size is critical to achieving this and as flowable hop extracts greatly reduce polyphenols the ratio and balance is affected.
Boosting with the flowable products is advisable with careful/incremental reduction in pellets whilst monitoring haze and stability impacts. Cryo Hop® to T90 ratio will be another way to find balance, for example a small increase in the T90:Cryo® ratio when hopping in combination with DynaBoost™ and HyperBoost™ may help achieve a similar polyphenol to protein ratio whilst still boosting aroma.
DynaBoost™ and HyperBoost™ may also prove useful in super hoppy recipes to reduce the risk of hop burn.
We want to hear about your experiences & answer any questions as you find your flow!
