More Aroma Oil, Faster: The Dry Hopster’s Holy Grail

OSU tests IH pellets vs Cones for aroma intensity and oil extraction rates

OK. OK. You want more aroma. Do you dry hop with whole cone hops, or pellets? And how long? You’ve got limited capacity. Do you dry hop for a week, or something less than that?

Questions. For answers, where do you turn? A textbook? A magazine? Your buddy? The BA message forum? Google? Or do you just wing it?

We tried all of the above, but decided the questions were serious enough to warrant serious study utilizing the scientific method and the best available technology.

In short, we called Peter Wolfe and Dr. Tom Shellhammer at Oregon State University. They spent a year researching the questions. It’s pretty interesting, even for a liberal arts guy like me. In fact, it’s fairly startling.

We won’t post the study here, as it has not yet been published. But, for details, give us a call, and we’ll give you a closer look at the data. For now, here’s a summary.

* A 10 member sensory panel evaluated the intensity of dry hop aroma from Cascade pellets and whole cones and concluded that the pellets provided more intense aroma.

* Beer samples dry hopped for one day had significantly more aroma than beer dry hopped for 7 days.

* Irrespective of form (pellet or whole cone), the concentrations of hydrocarbon terpenes (eg, myrcene, humulene and limonene) peaked between 3 and 6 hours in dry hopped beer and then declined, while the concentrations of terpene alcohols (e.g, linalool and geraniol) continued to increase throughout the 24 hour dry hop extraction.

A few caveats.

First, not all pellets are the same. The pellets used for this study were supplied by us, Indie Hops, and we’ve previously shown that our pellets are different in terms of the average particle size, the diameter and the “bakedness” (our grist is extruded at between 106F and 115F).

We’re gratified to learn that our pellets produced about twice the intensity of aroma than whole cones. That’s huge! The conclusion reinforces what common sense told us: nature designed the hop flower to keep the oils “in”, not let them out, while IH pellets were designed by guys who wanted to get the oil “out.” We deliberately designed our mill to chop up the cone in bigger, coarser particles so that we could open up without pulverizing the oil-exuding lupulin glands.

Second, the rapid extraction rates were likely influenced by the temperature of the solution (23.3C, which may not be representative of real world conditions), and the hops were continually stirred. Although there’s been ongoing anecdotes and discussion about methods for agitating or recirculating/re-entraining hop grist in the tanks, we don’t have a reasonably available tried and true technology for re-suspending hops during dry hopping.

The research suggests, however, that the machinery needed wouldn't be too terribly difficult, and it only need to engage for a few days.

Third, the sensory panel consisted of 10 trained beer geeks who measured the aroma intensity on a scale of 0-15 based on the smell, not taste. To quantify the aroma compounds extracted (e.g., linalool, myrcene, etc), as well as the extraction rates, OSU used all the usual hi-tech stuff.

The take home: if you don’t have a torpedo, prefer (IH) pellets over cones, don’t have limited tank capacity and like big oily aromas, you’re not measurably losing anything, other than lore points, by not using whole cones.

And if you really love big oil, keep noodling and tinkering with new ways to keep those pellets circulating. And if you really love big oil but aren’t big, if you can keep those pellet particles suspended, you might also be able to save money by shaving 3-4 days from the standard dry hop schedule.

In the meantime, we’ll keep asking the questions.

RGW
2/29/12

The name of the unpublished manuscript is: “Dry Hop Aroma Extraction and Sensory Evaluation Report on Phase II dry hopping experiments,” by Peter Wolfe and Thomas H. Shellhamer, Ph.D, Dept. of Food Science and Technology, OSU, Corvallis, Or. (1/2012).

Note: Check out these Guth Portable Agitators used for mixing, stirring and homogenization of liquids such as wine. Could the same technology be modified for use in agitating hops during dry hopping?

Hop Harvest Time: When and How Do You Know? OSU’s Tom Shellhammer Has A Clue

When is the optimum time to harvest hops for aroma?

How will you know when that optimum has been reached?

Do different aroma oils reach their maximum concentration at different times as the cone ripens?

These are some of the questions that drive Indie Hops to fund hop ‘maturity’ studies at Oregon State University. We are pleased to announce that the results of our first effort to wrestle with this topic will be presented at this year’s Craft Brewers’ Conference in San Francisco by OSU Professor Dr. Tom Shellhammer on Saturday, March 26th.

In late summer and early fall of 2010, Cascade and Willamette hops were collected on three successive weeks at three Oregon locations and analyzed for aromatic compounds by Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry. Thirty-one different GC ‘peaks’ were identified and compared.

In a fortunate coincidence, single hop beers using some of the very same hops were brewed by Deschutes Brewing and later judged by a sensory panel at OSU. This allowed us to relate some of the lab analysis to actual flavor perception in beer, something that will be pursued more fully in subsequent projects.

The complexity of hop aroma is so great that it’s not surprising to find that each attempt to answer one question brings several more to the surface. And although this first study is too limited to produce any grand conclusions, some commonly heard notions about hops now seem to be less certain. If you’re going to CBC, consider attending Dr. Shellhammer’s presentation to judge for yourself.

Perhaps some day we’ll learn that a 5-day difference at harvest can mean the difference between a decent well-hopped craft beer and a remarkable one.

See you at the CBC.

3/21/11

Going Big on my 50th Birthday With Kevin Buckley’s Imperi-Ale 5.0

Whether surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking or drinking IPAs, there’s a fine line between “going big” and taking yourself out.

More’s not always better. Sure, it’s quite a thrill to land that gnarly jump or ride that killer wave, but there’s a point where raising the bar will eventually kill you. Sort of like with imperial IPAs – a bigger IBU doesn't usually translate as a better tasting beer.

With that challenge in mind, I asked my friend Kevin Buckley to work outside his comfort zone and brew a specialty “big beer” for my 50th birthday. Kevin doesn’t normally toil away making gigantic “hop bombs,” but he generously agreed to give it a go.

The marching orders: use all Oregon grown hops supplied by Indie Hops; use about 5 pounds per barrel (to match my 50th), and unleash it on the night of my roast, cold (two months hence). The name: Imperi-Ale 5.0.

Kevin brewed with our Nuggets (13.9% AA, high essential oils), Centennial (11.5% AA, also high in essential oils), and Cascades (8.5% AA) per the following schedule:

First Wort-Nugget 2#
60 min-Centennial 2#
60 min-Nugget 3#
15 min-Centennial 2#
15 min-Nugget 2#
Whirlpool- Centennial 1#
Whirlpool-Cascade 2#
Primary ferm-Cascade 5#
Dry Hop-Cascade 15#
Dry Hop-Centennial 6#
Dry Hop-Nugget 4#

Dry hopping with Nugget? We admired the pluck, but were a bit concerned. Although it’s not uncommon to dry hop with super alphas that also have high essential oil (e.g., Columbus, Magnum, Summit, Simoce), most of said oil consists of myrcene and we were worried about off flavors (cat piss, grassy or machine –yuck!). How would all those essential oils, mainly myrcene in the Centennials and Nuggets, react with the alcohol, Co2, yeast, sugars, and oxygen?

Surprise Surprise! The result was a highly drinkable, well-balanced, pleasantly fruity beer without the sharp bitterness you might expect from a hop-forward ale clocking in at 98 IBU. The 8.7% ABV proved dangerously unnoticeable, as my fired up and emboldened friends lapped it up and proceeded to pound me unmercifully. Hey, like I told my roasters: A true friend will stab you in the front! (quoting Oscar Wilde). It went quickly.

A few of the comments on the Imperi-Ale 5.0 from the not exactly naïve quaffers in the room: a mildly sweet front end with a touch of melon flavor… A clean transition to a gentle bitterness… Moves towards a citrus/spicy note nurtured by a warming bready-toasty character of malt…. Finishes with a crisp melon punch and caramel sweetness, capped by a touch of lingering bitterness…

As Kevin modestly explained: “This brew, while loaded with hops, was designed to be big yet enjoyable for all levels of drinkers. For the extreme hop heads, there are moments when the hop bitterness shines through. For those partial to red/English pales, there’s plenty of body and malt complexity.”

Thanks Kevin. You went Big and we enjoyed the ride. And thanks for experimenting with our Nuggets for dry hopping. It’s a credit to your brewing talents that you were able to land this hugely hopped beer with grace and style (in stark contrast to Mr. Solberg, who after a few hours of steady infusion fell like a Mighty Doug Fir).

Imperi-Ale 5.0 was launched last week and Kevin’s customers are loving it. There’s still a few kegs left, but you should probably beat a hasty path down to Backstreet Brewery in Vista if you want to taste this break out, all Oregon grown hops beer. Hey, to those of you who might’ve stereotyped IH as an aroma only outfit, we can go big with the alpha, too!

Roger Worthington
2/15/2011

Variety, Uniqueness, Consistency

Craft beer thrives in a culture of diversity and adventure. In our own little town of Portland, Oregon, as soon as we reached thirty-some breweries and mumblings of “over saturated” picked up, a dozen more breweries opened up much to the enduring gratitude of happy customers. The growing variety of beers, pubs and breweries is attracting more and more thirsty people everyday.

Perhaps more than any other arrow in the quiver of ingredients, hops cast a spell on brewers and imbibers of American craft beer, tickling the potential for variety and individualism. Their symphony of oils reaches each of us with a unique tone, the crescendo leading some to ecstasy and others to seek refuge. We continue to be amazed at how wildly different educated palates can interpret the same hop.

Last summer a focus group panel was held that illustrates these varied perceptions toward hops. A group of accomplished craft brewers from Oregon tasted a series of single-hopped beers, not knowing what the hop was in the various samples. Descriptors they used to describe the prevailing hop character, and the number of panelists who used that descriptor, are below:

Clearly, one brewer’s nectar can be another’s poison! [One guy’s fruity apple can be another’s cat pee?]

As we’ve striven to learn from brewers how they’d like to see the hop world evolve, this theme of variety, creativity and uniqueness stands out.

Our resident brewer and Brewery Ambassador Matt Sage has recently travelled the craft brewery scenes in Washington State, Oregon, Southern California and Colorado, seeking insights into what brewers are looking for in hops. His findings are as varied as his travels! Click here for a taste of Matt’s curious adventures in the world of hop flavor.

Alongside variety and uniqueness, brewers also care about consistency. After all, when we find something we really like, we want it to be consistent. What can Indie Hops do to help the hop world evolve in a way that craft brewers would like to see? Well...might as well start with variety, uniqueness and consistency!

Click here for a review of a few of the breeding projects underway at Oregon State University that we are spearheading in our quest to probe the mysteries and amplify the wonders of the noble flower.

Cheers!
JS
jim@indiehops.com
2/8/11

The Home Hop Press Experiment

Instant Karma's gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head…
--John Lennon

Got whimsical and did something stupid. Didn’t start out being stupid, but got there quick enough.

Keep thinking about tea bags and coffee beans and how the use of those consumer staples might cross over to brewing beer. Tea drinkers know the pleasure of squeezing out the last burst of flavor (love that burst of ink).

Miserly coffee drinkers like me hate automatic espresso machines because they don’t allow the user to hit that puck one final time to strain out that last bit of resinous flavor. I don’t like tossing oily pucks into the garbage.

In my quest to extract hop flavor, I conducted an experiment in my kitchen. I filled a 14 oz French coffee press with a small handful of US Fuggle whole cones. Slowly poured in about 6 ounces of Fat Tire – real slowly since on contact the beer exploded into a thick, resolute column of foam.

The goal was to press the screen down flat against the cones on the bottom. The problem was the plunger on my coffee press didn’t reach the base, leaving about a 1-1.5 inch gap. Had plenty of beer contact with the hops but couldn’t get that one last muscular push.

The lightly squeezed hop-infused Fat Tire didn't live up to it's name – it went from fat to flat. It’s like the cones sucked out the alcohol, CO2, malt and flavor, leaving a thin, attenuated and insipid brew that gave off the aroma of wet grass.

On the other hand, I took comfort in knowing my hoppinated beverage was loaded with fresh anti-microbials, anti-fungals and anti-stomach bugs. Plus a heavy dose of xanthohumol and quercetin. Plus with all those cannibaccea-related sedatives I did wind up sleeping like a baby buddha.

Back to the drawing board. Note to self: not so sure that dropping whole cones into a pint will add much (beyond the aforementioned pharmaceutical stuff) . Fun, and romantic, and certainly a boon to consumer hop education, but not sure it adds anything zesty in the way of flavor. Might even screw up the original flavor.

Second note to self: hop oils are generally hydrophobic. The myrcene in Fuggles is 46%. Im seriously doubting the lupulin glans will easily give up their precious oils during a 60 second dunking. I suspect most beer lovers want to put that foamy brew to their lips within about 10 seconds of the pour.

I have heard tales of brewers, inspired by the coffee press model, attempting to renovate their fermentation tanks during dry hopping to achieve a similar process. I’ve asked around and so far, nobody’s owned up to it. The idea would be to lower a screen into the tank and press the hops (whole cone or fat pellets) and squeeze out the oil. Of course this may also squeeze out tannins and acids and other undrinkable compounds.

It would have to be engineered just right – a removable top, a tight plunger that could easily lower, and a base that would still allow for the fresh squeezed hoppy beer to flow through the bottom.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know. To work, we’ll need time, money and crack engineers. Hop Karma doesn’t come instantly.

Roger Worthington
10/27/10

Will Mad River's Whole Cone-centric Method to Aroma Madness Allow for Properly Designed Pellets? IH Mock-Examines Brewer Dylan Schatz.

Mad River Brewery in Humboldt County is on our radar. They're craft pioneers. They make great beer. They win medals. They're a touch wacky. And they've hitched their aroma wagon to the whole cone.

In short, Mad River offers up the sort of challenge that Indie Hops was born for. Any merchant can sell pellets to a brewer who's already sold on their virtues. But it takes a hop messiah to liberate the whole cone disciple from the chains of nostalgia, romance and tradition. Good Lord that sounds arrogant. The hop hubris! Have I gone too far? My conscience is starting to sting. But wait, we do sell whole cones, too. We just think that pellets, done right, can deliver unto beer more bang for the buck.

Like Deschutes and nearby Sierra Nevada, Mad River knows a few things about hops. They're sort of a micro version of Sierra Nevada. Indeed, they brew on the original 17 barrel system that launched Ken Grossman to greatness. Like SN, their operational mantras are recycle, re-use and reduce waste. Unlike SN, which uses whole cones only, Mad River does use pellets for bittering.

Ripe for conversion? Not exactly. But, to his credit, head brewer Dylan Schatz has an open mind about what whole cones can and cannot deliver. I recently spoke to Dylan after his triumphant return from the GABF in Denver. Mad River had just won the Small Brewery of the Year and three medals, including the Gold for his John Barleycorn Barleywine (which also took Gold in 2007).

A little background here. Dylan's been cooking up winning brews at Mad River since 2000. The brewery was established in 1989. Their flagship beer, Steelhead Extra Pale ale, took the Silver at the GABF this year, after winning the Gold in 2008. Mad River offers 12 styles (6 year-rounds, 4 seasonals and 2 draught only), has accounts in 30 states, and projects 11,500 barrels in 2010, up about 500 barrels from last year. They're growth curve is steadily upwards to the right. Clearly, their eye is on the prize.

For aroma hops, Dylan prefers Cascade, US Tettnanger, Willamette, and Amarillo. Mad River pushes the wort through a hop back before whirlpooling. They also dry hop with whole cones in a nylon bag. Their system is designed for the most part to use whole cones. And yet , as the conversation progressed, a question inside me began to burn and burn hotter. With at least trying not to sound argumentative, or arrogant, and prefacing the question with a disclosure that 20 years of trial lawyering have given me habits that are hard to break, I queried Dylan whether he had any ... Dear God ... evidence, empirical or anecdotal, that using whole cones was a better way to extract oils than pellets.

"Evidence? Like you mean courtroom evidence," Dylan asked, puzzled. "No, none of that. We just have a personal preference for whole leaf hops. Plus our beers are unfiltered, which means we don't want to clog our whirlpool and tanks with hop pellet sediment. "

No lawyer, even a recovering lawyer, is worth his wingtips if can't cook up at least one river-parting rebuttal. “Sir, are you saying that the method to Mad River’s madness, and by that mean I mean your steadfast reliance on whole cones for aroma, is based moreso on tradition, romance and nostalgia than the guiding light of science and reason?

To which Mr. Schatz – correctly I might add – took the Fifth, but added: “We prefer pure raw ingredients. “To which I just had to rebut, bad habits being both bad and hard to break, “But, sir, you do use pellets for bittering, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And why, good sir, do you use pellets for bittering?”

“I am bound to admit that they offer good utilization in the boil. They’re concentrated. They’re stable. They store better. “

“Ah, the glory of efficiency. You’re saying pellets, properly designed, offer advantages in efficiency. Let me ask you, have you ever broken up a whole cone after dry hopping with same?

“Yes.”

“Then you have seen, after pulling back the bracts, clusters of semi-full lupulin glans, clinging as Nature intended to the strig, still bursting with oil?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know if they were full or not, nor whether they were ‘ bursting.’”

“But you do send wort infused cones to a local rancher who in turns feeds the beery hops to free range cattle who, in turn, alternate between hobbly-gobbly, happy-wappy and sleepy-weepy, as if under the influence of humulus lupulus, which as we know is a close cousin to Cannabaceae family.”

“Sir, we live in Humboldt County, where all sorts of medicinal and spiritual weeds grow wild. I have indeed seen happy cows, but I can neither confirm nor deny whether their euphoria was the result of humulus lupulus.”

“But you can confirm that oil is aroma and flavor and your mission is to extract as much aroma and flavor and, on balance, you’d rather please your flavor-thirsty customers than the local manure- splattered ungulates.”

“It’s true that we’d rather help our customers slake their thirst first before the cows and pigs, but the pellets we’ve used just aren’t suitable. They’re made of dust, fall to the bottom, form a sludge and otherwise end up in our unfiltered beers. In addition, we are bound by a city permit that requires us to pre-treat our wastewater, which means removing suspended solids and oxygen demanding biomass.”

“I see. Would you be interested in a hop pellet whose particle size distribution was substantially greater than the standard? That is, for dry hopping, what if you packed a tightly knit bag with larger hop particle pellets, thus minimizing leaching?”

“I’d be interested. But I have one request.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Whether we try out your ballyhooed big fat oily pellets or your Oregon-nursed whole cones, can you please pretty please screen out the safety glasses, chunks of tire, baling wire, corn cobs, license plates and desiccated bird carcasses? The pigs may like ‘em, but we don’t. Keep ‘em pure. We’re mad that way.”

“Yessir, we are on it. Our farmers hand pluck the artifacts on the drying room floors and we spent a buttload of money on a seed/vine separator. In the meantime, stay tuned for that vaunted empirical evidence out of Oregon State. We’re going to answer the optimal oil extraction question burning in every brewers brain once and for all. Cones vs. pellets? If pellets, how fat? How coarse?”

Stay tuned. And Mad River, be glad, stay Mad, but stand by to tweek your tried and true methods if, and this is IH being bold again, the research backs up our intuition. Hey, you gotta believe.

Roger Worthington
9/27/10

Tonya Cornett: Big Things from a Small Package. Plus Notes Towards Solving the Vexing Packaging Conundrum

Tonya Cornett has won just about every award but you wouldn’t know it from talking to her. She’s not one to boast. But taste her beers and it’s clear why the halls of Bend Brewing Company are adorned with tons of her medals, mostly gold.

I dropped by to pick Tonya’s brain about hops, naturally. Where most brewers tend toward the crustier side, Tonya is a breath of fresh air. Cheerful, buoyant and smooth. As she said, she doesn’t wear her beers on her sleeves, daring you to knock them off. She wants your criticism, as she’s always looking for ways to improve even those bellwether beers that have won her so many accolades, beers like Outback X and her big bold Hophead Imperial IPA.

Tonya’s been brewing up fabulous beers for over 8 years at BBC and 15 years in all. She mainly works alone in a tight brewhouse that’s best compared to the engine room of a vintage WWII US attack sub. A web of hoses like the roots of a giant Doug Fir treacherously line the floors. The rest is stainless tanks, kettles, handles, valves and a cold room. The diminutive but not tiny -- I won’t use the word ‘swarthy’ to describe our chipper, ginger-haired, bob-tailed brewer -- is like one of those resilient five star chefs who manages to churn out the most mouth-watering delights from the humblest of kitchens.

The eminently likeable Tonya has a reputation for exceeding expectations, except her own. "I don’t think I’m ever completely satisfied. I’ve learned that brewing is an evolutionary process. You set a goal and patiently take baby steps towards it. When you’re close, that’s when you need to stop and re-evaluate, asking yourself: how can I make this even better?"

To improve, Tonya is a big fan of experimentation. She was the first brewer in the beer hotbed that is Bend, Oregon to use pellets for dry hopping, several years ago. “They thought I was crazy, but now it’s fairly well accepted, except at Deschutes of course where they use whole cones.” I got the impression she was far more proud of that “first” than being the first female to ever win the small brewpub brewmaster of the year award at the World Beer Cup in 2008. Everyone’s impressed with a pioneer it seems, except the pioneer.

As far as hops go, Tonya admits to obsessing on the details of getting the aromas and flavor just right. “It’s funny,” she laughed. “Customers really have no idea how much thought goes into getting that aroma just right.” At the same time, she’s an alpha monster who loves bittering workhorses like Galena, Nugget, Northern Brewer and Perle.

The funny thing about meticulous, uncompromising craft brewers like Tonya – and this is where I go off script and wing it -- is that when it comes to ordering hops, and accepting them, they often sound powerless. Tonya, like so many otherwise stalwart brewers, has never ever rejected hops , even ones that were intolerably cheesy. If the alpha acid was below the custom, she still took and paid for the hops and simply made adjustments on the fly.

Like her brethren, she’s often worried about the shape and hardness of her pellets. “Sometimes they come in baked and shiny. Brittle. They just cleave apart, and it makes me wonder how they behave in the tanks during dryhopping.” She, like others, worries about these things, but like a seasoned trauma doctor in the ER, she’s learned to triage the urgent from the merely important.

Asked why she didn’t’ hold suppliers to her own standards of excellence, Tonya matter of factly admitted what I’ve gleaned from so many smaller craft brewers: "I have so much going on, so many batches and ingredients that keep me on my toes. I really don’t have the time and manpower to send the hop pellets back, though I should. I feel stuck with what I got. I certainly wouldn’t try to sell them to my friends – that’d be a good way to make enemies."

And this is the rub of it. Brewers like Tonya have high standards but because of limited resources they have to make do with the cards they’ve been dealt. They want to learn more about where their hops were grown and why terroir is important. They want to know for each batch the hop chemistry, including oil content and composition. They want to know why a pellet is designed the way it is, and they want to know if there’s a relationship between that design and the oil extraction and dispersability. They want to know how to optimize oil utilization.

In short, they want to be educated. And that’s where a hop merchant comes in.

Take a look at packaging, for example. How many brewers today specify that they want their pellets packaged in a soft or hard pack? How many know what the optimal residual oxygen content should be? Brewers certainly would like to refrain from having to break up cementious bricks of pellets with a hammer and chisel, but how does a brewer know that the pellets in a soft pack are preserved correctly? Can a soft pack of pellets (think bag of potato chips) still be relatively oxygen free? How does one know? What’s the standard? And why?

Tonya expressed both puzzlement and frustration over these packaging questions. She recently received four (4) 11 pound bags of Cascades from a supplier [see the pictures above]. Two were hard as a brick. The other two were loose, as if the bag had been punctured. Were they punctured? No hole was visible. The supplier simply sent the bags with no explanation, no attempt to educate.

"I guess you sometimes fall into the ‘small brewer mentality’, where you just take what you get and forget that you have a choice," confessed Tonya earnestly. "Believe me, I’d like to have the data. I’d like to hold them [the hop merchant] to a standard, like a warranty, but we’re not Deschutes. Show me a merchant who provides me with the data and tells me why it’s important and I’ll vote with my dollars."

Heard that. Just as we are committed to protecting our pellets from excessive heat, we also want to insure that our pellets are packaged in an inert environment in such a way that facilitates ease of use. Stay tuned for further news on the packaging and pellet design fronts. In addition, with the help of our friends at Oregon State, we’re looking at developing a science-based hop substitution chart. The effort is to provide as much valid information to the brewer and let them decide.

When it comes to enhancing hop flavor, packaging is a critical issue from start to finish, from the hopyard to the brewhouse. Nature designed the hop flower to protect the snugly tucked lupulin glands. IH is designing pellets to protect and enhance those aromatic oils. Brewers understand the need to protect the hop metabolites in their beer by using darker glass t bottle. The emphasis on hop oil protection carries all the way to the bar where the brew is served.


As Tonya stressed as we sat down at the bar to sample her work, while the bartender happily pulled a draught into a warm wide mouthed glass, “I can’t stand it when I see a hoppy IPA poured into an ice cold pint glass. You have to let the oils in these beers breathe.” You have to wait until the time is right. Until then, we’ll be striving to protect those magic oils from the ravages of oxygen, heat and all manner of slap-dashery.

Roger Worthington
9/9/10

PS Thanks for using our Centennials in your Elk Lake and good luck at the Alpha King Challenge. Readers: check out Tonya’s unlabeled scarlett IPA (9% ABV, 80 IBU, Centennial and Chinook), to my tastes, a podium contender at the upcoming World Beer Cup.

Interview with Hop-Happy Hipster Kevin Buckley, Master Brewer for BackStreet Brewery

“The only educated man is a self-educated man.” Mark Twain

VISTA, CA. Kevin Buckley creates beers like a chef cooks up dazzlingly delicious entrees. He borrows the best traditions from the masters before him, but now and then, when the spirit moves, he adds a little something special of his own. In his words, it’s all about associating the brewer’s personality with his beers.

Kevin’s a likeable, knowledgeable, self-taught sort of hipster (yes, his head’s adorned with the usual pins, spikes and rings). But he’s not exactly an easy going surfer dude. He leans more towards the mindset of the perfectionist, with a readiness to make do with the ingredients and equipment in front of him.

At the tender age of 28, Kevin’s the master brewer of Back Street Brewery in Vista, California. His training was, like so many craft prodigies, far from typical. He didn’t learn the brewing arts at famed Siebel Academy, but he did toil a few years at a brewery in Iowa under two Siebel grads. “I just read their books and manuals on my own,” he said with the satisfied grin of an artisan jack-of-all-trades.

Kevin’s been brewing for Back Street since April. When he arrived in April, Back Street had about four in-house brewed beers on tap. Today, Back Street offers between 8 and 10 taps of it’s own hopped creations.

Vista is in North County, near Stone Brewing, Green Flash and Lost Abbey, all progenitors of big bold beers. Not surprisingly, when Kevin took the job after a stint at Alpine Beer Company, Kevin’s first order of business was to bring home an Imperial IPA, the signature bourbonesque brew of San Diego (by the way, Kevin is an avowed fan of bourbon).

Kevin, who grew up wanting to be a chef, loves hops the way a pastry chef loves sugar. He uses lots of hops – in fact, ton’s of them. He brews using a vintage, 1990-ish Bohemian 21 BBL kettle and a series of 15 bbl capacity fermentation tanks. For his Rydin’ Dirty Rye IPA, he uses about 3 pounds of hop pellets per barrel. For his Ali Rae Imperial IPA, he uses a whopping 5.5 pounds per barrel! My mouth waters at the thought. Ok, I admit it’s watering partially because both of those weighty concoctions showcase Indie Hops’ Cascade and Centennial pellets, and heavens they’re tasty!

Since his arrival at Backstreet only 6 months ago, Kevin has doubled the output from around 250 barrels per year to a pace that will generate about 550 barrels per year. He does it his way: no assistants, not much mentoring, and very little oversight. He doesn’t have a filter or hop back, so he improvises. He’s a quick study with a brain like a sponge, eyes like a hawk and ears like a cat. He’s confident, but far from cocky. He’s humble, but clearly unafraid to push the envelope.

I caught up with Kevin at Back Street the other day. He’s been buying a fair amount of our hops and I wanted his feedback.

RGW: Tell us about your experience with using Indie Hops pellets for dry hopping.

KB: I heard about your coarse design and wanted to check it out. When I opened the foil, I sensed right away a difference. Your hops were thicker and oilier. They looked greener and fresher. It was always a mystery to me why Type 90 pellets were so fine and tiny – they just tended to sink to the bottom and sit there. Yours didn’t quickly settle, they sort of bloomed, like you’d expect of a flower.

RGW: What about the aroma?

KB: Your Cascades have that quintessential floral, grapefruity aroma. When I brewed with your Cascade whole leaf hops, the brew house filled with that special aroma, the way a kitchen fills with that smell of homemade cookies in the oven.

RGW: How did you add the pellets to your tank? Did you use a bag or drop ‘em right in.

KB: I use a small muslin bag when I pull off casks. But for dry hopping, I just poured them from the top. Your pellets are slightly bigger than average, so I rigged up a White Labs’ Yeast jug, which has a 2 inch diameter pour spout which matches up with the portal on the roof of our tank. Just weighed out what I needed and poured ‘em right in.


RGW: Do you do anything to recirculate or re-entrain the hop mash after it has settled?

KB: I usually ferment for about a week and dry hop for two. Every few days dry hopping I would rouse or blast CO2 for a few seconds through the bottom. I’m mindful that CO2 may impact the aromatics of the hop oils but I haven’t detected any off flavors. On balance, between a pump and the CO2 to rouse, it’s more efficient for me in terms of labor and sanitation to rouse the tanks every 2-3 days, so you get that contact with the hop plant surface area. Sort of like a tea bag: you want to let it steep but then punch it a few times to draw out as much oil and flavor as you can.

RGW: Any drainage issues?

KB: Nope. I just draw out the hop sediment and divert it to the drain into the public sewer. It’s not a problem, although the drain screen wasn’t exactly designed for a thick mash of hop sludge.


RGW: So what are you looking for from your hop suppliers?

KB: Two things: an open line of communication and dedication to quality. Look, I know we’re not a huge account. That’s why we need quality hops, so we can attract more customers. When I have a question, or an issue, I’d like for my supplier to listen. For example, at a different brewery, when I opened up the bags, I had to pre-sift the whole hops for sticks, stones, stems, wires and debris. In fact we thought about collecting all the junk in a bucket, weighing it, and asking for a refund!

Another example: with our Amarillos, we were getting a steady stream of seeds. The seeds were clogging up the screen filter in our heat exchanger. We need hops that are as seed-free as possible. They can clog, but the tannins can also deliver funky off-flavors.

In any case, the attitude from our supplier was dismissive. Yeah, I know, we’re not a huge brewer, but I don’t get it. If I brew a sucky beer, I lose business and they lose another customer purchasing their hops.

I’m not a big fan of the Starbucks, ‘standardized mediocrity’ model. Craft brewers need a supplier who will charge a fair price – not $21 a pound for Cascades! And don’t get me started about storage fees. We need a hop supplier who focuses on flavor, aroma and oil. I think it’s great that Indie Hops has come along to help fill this niche.

RGW: Well, thank you sir. What do you think Indie Hops could do better in terms of its pellet design?

KB: Well, every brew system is slightly different. The bigger the tank, the more challenging it is to simply drop pellets through the roof for dry hopping. We don’t have a hop back or filter, so I’m sure those might present challenges if you want to design an even bigger diameter pellet. Overall, I like the idea of preserving as much of the lupulin as you can. It’s sort of like what the doctors tell you about vitamins: it’s better to get your Vitamin C from real fruits and veggies than relying on a pulverized pill.

RGW: What do you like most about brewing?

KB: The feedback. Nothing sweeter than the smile on a satisfied customer. That smile doesn’t come from magic. A lot goes into making a beer special: quality ingredients, perspiration, inspiration and a bit of luck. It’s great to get paid for doing what I enjoy. I love being a part of the craft beer movement, a competitive but incredibly cooperative industry. I suppose like any brewer I want to earn the respect of my fellow brewers and one day, like Vinnie, or Jim Koch, or Sam Calgione or Ken Grossman, maybe Kevin Buckley will have his line of signature beers.

At about that time – around noonish -- an elderly couple ambled in and took a seat on the bar. The wife robustly ordered an IPA, offering: “We were just up in Mammoth at the Bluesapoolooza. We tried your beer up there, loved it and decided to track you down.” This is how the revolution is won, one satisfied customer at a time.

Roger Worthington
8/19/10

Optimal Oil Extraction 101.

Whole Cones vs Turkish Espresso Pellets: Where’s That Sweet Spot?

How does a brewer get the most hop oil for the buck? Does he dry hop with whole cones? Or with pellets? The research shows that a brewer using pellets can extract about 30-35% more alpha acid in solution than he can from whole cones, but I’m not aware of any oil extraction studies pitting cones vs pellets.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but assuming the same holds true with respect to oil extraction – that a pellet offers up more oil for extraction than a cone, what is the optimal design of the pellet?

In short, where’s the sweet spot? On one end, we have a properly harvested, dried, baled and stored whole cone flower. On the other, we have that same flower pulverized into a fine Turkish espresso powder compressed to a 3 mm pellet.

How do we open up the flower to best utilize the oil inside the resin glands without unduly exposing them to the ravages of oxygen and heat? And why do we need to “open” them up at all?

The answer to that last question is intuitive. Look at a whole cone. The oil together with the resins is inside the tiny cup- shaped yellowish resin glands. The glands themselves are coated with a permeable membrane, or skin. Even though it seems logical, there’s no definitive research proving that heat or air have an impact on the gland’s permeability. The permeability varies between hop varieties.

The inside of the gland consists of many molecules, including the hop resins, the oil (about 250 bio-chemically distinct compounds) and anti-oxidants (like quercetin and xanthohumol), which themselves help prevent oxidation and prolong the shelf life of both the oil and the resin.

Nature designed the cone to protect those precious glands from predators. They’re tucked around the vertebrae of the cone (the strig) where they cling to the bracteoles, the internal scales shielded by the weather-exposed bracts. If you poured water over the cone, it’s not likely that much would penetrate the bracteoles and reach the resin glands (like water off a duck’s back).

If you dipped the cone into an aqueous solution, more water would reach the central axis, but the process of extracting the oils from the glands is not very efficient. This became clear to me when I recently scooped up a handful of spent whole cones that had been dry hopped. I opened a few up and I could plainly see a few yellowish glands, all perky and plump.

It’s not a great analogy, but think about coffee beans. You can’t dip coffee beans into hot water and efficiently extract any appreciable amount of oil. To bring out the oil, you need to grind the bean up. The question is, to get the best flavor and aroma out of that bean, how do you preserve the bean, when do you grind it up, and how finely do you grind it?

I’ve been applying these same questions to the hop cone. It’s clear to me after examining several pellets from different pellet mills that the size of the pellet and the coarseness/fineness of the grind dramatically influence both the quality and quantity of utilizable oil. Granted, I haven’t measured the “extraction” rate or amount in a laboratory. But it’s fairly well known that hop oils degrade rapidly when they’re exposed to heat, light and air.

If the key to optimal oil extraction is maximal lupulin gland preservation, but the oil glands are tucked inside, how does one “process” the cone, or open it up, and shake out the glands, without unduly rupturing, cooking, or shattering them? I called the People’ Hopmeister , Dr. Al Haunold, for help.

It turns out there is a middle ground, but I’ m not sure how sweet it is. Dr. Al tells me that there was a technique developed years ago for shaking the lupulin glands out of the cone and capturing them fairly whole: pure, concentrated glands containing resins and oils. The shake-out process requires freezing the dried cones followed by a “gentle” shaking. The cones are not compressed into a bale. The process is laborious and both time and space consuming.

The shake-down-and-out method might work in a Willy Wonka-ish factory run by oompa loompahs who never complain. But, after investing a few million in a pellet mill, not sure I’m ready to throw down for a massive shake down operation. Nor do I think there’s an immediate demand for pure unfractionated hop oil, as brewers are accustomed to using pellets and cones, and few have drilled down to knowing precisely which of the several dozen popular oil “essences” they want for each brew style.

Al explains that the resin glands during picking and drying tend to fall out of the tossed-about cone. The rate at which the glands fall or shake out depends on the variety, the moisture content, and the harvest date – if the cone is harvested late and is therefore too “fluffy,” then the glands are more likely to fall out – a phenomenon he calls “shattering.”

A badly harvested, picked and dried cone can lose up to 40% of its lupulin glands. Where do they go? They fall on the floor. Per Al, you can separate the good farmers from the mediocre or worse by the concentration of yellow lupulin glands on the picking and drying floors – the so-called “Yellow Floor” syndrome. And by the way, according to the Hop Oracle, it’s not unusual for the farmer to scoop up all that yellow gold and sell it separately to extractors in years of hop shortages. In good hop production years, there may not be much of a demand for such sweepings.

All that piney, citrusy, mango-ish, floral oil, together with all the bittersweet alpha, swept away like dust in the wind. A tragedy!

So, where do we go from here? We continue to question and tinker. I recently met with a brewer who said he wanted to experiment with dry hopping using both pellets and whole cones. He’s convinced that while traditional, and perhaps even romantic, dry hopping with whole cones leaves a lot of juice on the table (in addition to soaking up a lot of valuable beer). He wants to dry hopping using cones, in one batch, hand, and coarsely ground and fatter IH pellets, in another, and evaluate the differences.

Straight up he says whats driving his curiosity is a blend of both wanting to up the quality of his brew and save money by using fewer hops but extracting more flavorful oil. We like that. Question everything.

In the meantime, we control the things we can. For example, we will freeze our freshly harvested 2010 bales on receipt. We’ll hammer the flowers minimally and squeeze them through our die lovingly at under 110 Degrees F. And we’ll double nitrogen flush our cool pellets, wrap them in an impermeable layer of foil, and whisk them right back into the deep freeze in under 70 minutes. Can’t wait to crank it up!

Roger Worthington
7/27/10

Less is More – Larry Sidor, Deschutes Brewery’s Head Hopster

Larry Sidor is a whole hop guy. It’s basically non-negotiable. Having worked for a Yakima hop merchant and an industrial brewer back in the day, Larry has seen first-hand the ravages that processing inflicts upon the noble flower. The Master Brewer for Deschutes who has brought us Abyss, Dissident, Red Chair IPA and Green Lakes Organic Ale (my personal favorite) is a big fan of fresh, wholesome ingredients.

“As a rule, the less we tamper with it, the more I’ll probably like it,” he says.

So you can imagine my trepidation as I walked inside the Deschutes Brewery in Bend with my cooler of hop pellets to meet up with our hop purist. As I told one brewer earlier about my hop ambitions, my goal is to one day create a hop pellet that earns the blessing of Larry Sidor, the High Hop Priestess. I was of course prepared for a polite but firm woodshedding.

What I got instead was a captivating tutorial by a man who not only knows his craft but is eager to learn more. Although Larry is a stickler for whole cones, occasionally, when a beer screams out for pellets (and he's a few bales short), he will listen. Larry had on hand four pelletted varieties from four different suppliers: three from Yakima and one from Germany.

The first noticeable difference was the diameter. Yakima numbers 1 and 2 were 4 mm diameter, Yakima #3 was 6 mm, and the French variety was also 6 mm. Our pellets were 6 mm, and in general they were longer.

The second detectable difference was the Yakima varieties were harder and more baked. A few showed tell-tale signs of “rat-tailing,” a new word I picked up which, as Larry, explained, meant a harder “shell” on the outside of the pellet, indicating excessive heat during pelletization. As previously reported, Indie Hops has been able to lower the temperature at the die of it's spanking new 'patient' pelleting mill without coolants to 104F – 110F, whereas the Yakima standard is 130F.

Third, the Yakima varieties crumbled into a fine powder, the French pellets broke up into a coarser grind, and the IH pellets offered the coarsest grind. I asked the Hop Oracle about the importance of the coarseness of the pellet grist to the craft brewer.

“You have to go back to the beginning. We started pelleting hops back in the mid 1960’s for one reason: whole hops occupied too much valuable space, which translated into higher shipping and refrigeration costs. By increasing the bulk density, we could store and ship more pellets at a lower cost. But the downside was a loss in hop quality.”

“There’s nothing magic about a 4 mm pellet. The smaller the grind, the more cut surface, which means more leaching of vegetative materials into the beer,” Larry rolled on, clearly enjoying his platform. “The English have used ‘plugs,” which are about 25 mm, which they inserted into the bunghole of the cask, but I’ve never seen them produced in the US. A puck-sized pellet with a coarser grind would be … interesting.


We then dropped the hop pellets into a pint half-filled with hot water. The IH brew had the biggest fluid absorption and fiber expansion rates. The pellets on contact sort of blossomed like a dehydrated chili of Brussels sprouts (or, maybe, like a chia pet?).

Next, we performed the flagpole test: we stuck a butter knife in the center of each solution to see if the mass was dense enough to hold the utensil firmly upright. The only Hell Broth to survive the “ramrod salute” test: Indie Hops. Thicker is richer.

Next we compared the pellet fiber expansion with the Real Deal, a cup of compressed whole hops (see photo below). During dry hopping, Larry puts the cones into a bag which he secures to the bottom of the tank. As he explained, the ethanol and Co2 in the wort combine to help extract the lovely oils from the lupulin.

Larry posited that a whole cone is better able to preserve the precious lupulin glands by virtue of a sort of “anti-oxidant barrier” contained in the tannins. “When you chop up the hop and rupture the glands, the only shield left is the foil used to bag the pellets,” he said, again in the easy manner of a professor with a boatload of diplomas. “The outer bracts of the whole cone, as well as the in tact membrane of the lupulin gland, provide a natural barrier to oxidation.”

This struck me as an interesting notion, the idea that the cone’s skin of natural anti-oxidants served to insulate the lupulin from degeneration. After class adjourned, I did a bit of digging. First, a bit of hop morphology. Most of the tiny, grandular lupulin glands are located at the base of the bract but others are scattered on the external bracts (or scales). Preserving all of them in tact sounds awfully difficult. The process of picking, drying and then tightly compressing the flowers into bales inescapably ruptures the glands, not to mention the agitation that occurs during transportation and storage.

In sum, a pristine hop for the commercial brewer is a worthy goal but, practically speaking, highly unlikely. At the same time, proper handling of the cone should be able to provide some measure of protection to the internal lupulin glands congregating in the heart of the cone.

Second, the theory that the flower’s natural anti-oxidants coat and insulate the glands from the ravages of heat and air has an elegant appeal, but is it supported by science? I’m not sure, not because I’ve ever done any hop research, which I haven’t, but simply because I don’t know.

I’m a big fan of tannins conceptually, which contain the powerful flavonoids quercetin and xanthohumol, but it’s my impression that the tannins are a chemical constituent inside the leaves and stem; they are not a structural component, nor are they located inside the glands. And, of course, while tannins offer promise neutraceutically, they don’t endear themselves to good tasting brews.

What does make sense is that the anti-oxidants, if they can survive whole cone or pellet processing, could contribute to the storage quality of the plant material. I’ll have to talk to my friends at OSU about that. Good hop food for thought.

In a nutshell, it’s hard for humans not to disturb the noble flower. To prove the point, Larry trotted out a foiled brick of Hallertau Saphir whole cones from Germany, which looked like it had been processed at the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic trench. In the effort to maximize bulk density, the Deutsch processor essentially crushed the cones flat as silver dollars, which doesn’t bode well for either the lupulin glands or the brewer trying to carefully measure out a quart or two.

Larry Sidor’s enthusiasm for hops and brewing is contagious. As my partner Jim says, “The day you stop getting better is the day you start getting worse.” Jim’s the son of a famous high school football coach, so his cornball fire-up clichés are forgivable. In a good but inspirational way Larry exemplifies this ballyhooed spirit of forever striving for higher quality.

”I’ve seen pellets from 2 to 4 to 6 to 7 millimeters. Why not pellet at 10 to 12 millimeters, or bigger?” Larry suggested, his mind churning with strategies for challenging the status quo. “I’m excited about the coarseness of your pellets, but why stop at a few hundred microns? Why not remove the screen from your hammer mill altogether? That would be perfect.”

“Perfect” as is in more like a whole cone. Larry, thank you, we’re on it. We’re here to challenge the pellet orthodoxy which elevates bulk density over oil preservation. Meanwhile, get ready to test out our new bigger and coarser pellets, you may be pleasantly surprised…

Roger Worthington
6/14/10

Interview with Dr. Shaun Townsend

Breeding a Bold New World of Aroma Hops

The quest to breed more desirable aroma hops, aromas and flavor, oddly enough, has never really begun. While breeders like Dr. Al have hit home runs on crafting hop cultivars with more alpha, or higher yields, or disease resistance, few if any public breeding programs have made new and better aroma oils their holy grail.

Until now. As we’ve reported, Indie Hops has sponsored a breeding and research program at Oregon State University which, for the first time, targets aroma hops. I spoke with Dr. Shaun Townsend, hops geneticist, about the new program that he’s pioneering along, along with his colleague Dr. Tom Shellhammer, a hop chemist.

Is there a Super Aroma Hop Profile?

The short answer, according to Shaun, is no. We can talk all day about total oils and specific oil compounds. But , but nobody really knows – largely because the research investment historically has been nearly nil—the association between particular oils (e.g., farnesene, linalool, humulene. Gerianol, citral, limonene, etc) and definable and discrete flavors (e.g., floral, piney, citrusy, spicy, herbal, etc). remains naggingly unclear.

“There’s a glaring gap in our knowledge on how hop oils and their constituents interact to influence the taste and flavor of beer,” said Shaun. “There’s not a blue print or road map that tells us which oils to amp up or tamp down, or how do either of these compounds might be genetically associated.” The acids, on the other hand, are relatively simple, he said. “Just look at CZT [Columbus, Zeus, Tomahawk]. In a few decades the high water mark for alpha acids went from around 11% to around 18 to t 19%.”

In contrast, Hhop oils, Shaun muses, are a more “complex beast.” Hornbook biology teaches us that the traits of a particular plant are influenced by genetics and environment. The exact contribution, however, is not well known. We know that soil, climate, pests insect invasion, and temperature are a huge influence, he says, but there’s a “gap in our knowledge” when it comes to connecting specific DNA sequences to specific oils that wind up in beers that register in our brains as having particular qualities.

Do You Start with A List of “Super Aroma” Target Traits?

Again, the answer is no, at least for Shaun. We know from the literature that aroma hops are associated with certain traits. For example, aroma hops are generally defined as having:

* Low alpha acid content (less than 5%)
* Low myrcene oil (less than 50% of total oil)
* Low cohumulone alpha acid
* Alpha acid to beta acid ratio near 1.0
* Poor storageability
* Medium total oils content (.5 to 1.5 % of the whole hop)
* High humulene to caryophyllene ratio (above 3)

These are decent guidelines, but under OSU’s new aroma flagship program, defining worthy traits is the domain of Tom, while Shaun will attempt to breed for those selected traits.

To help identify the hops which may express desirable characteristics, Tom will be orchestrating hop sensory panels over the next few years. The panels will consist of experienced craft brewers, who will be asked to identify and describe flavor and aroma qualities of various hop brews. The data analysis from the sensory panels will be fed to Shaun, who will in turn cross targeted female and male hops for breeding, using conventional breeding techniques.

How does the Breeding Work?

Using Tom’s data, Shaun should readily identify the female plants. Choosing the male crossing partner, however, will be more difficult. Why? It boils down to who’s got the most accessible humulus lupulin. Females are teeming with it, but males – not so much. Their resin glands are much, much smaller, making it harder to harvest resin for analysis.

“We aren’t exactly shooting in the dark,” assured Shaun. “We have several decades worth of data on breeding stock. Since males don’t produce cones, it will be harder to identify the best males with an optimal oil profile, but it can be done. Basically, if the oil profile from the progeny of a particular male is desirable, we can trace the genetic contribution back to the male partner. It just takes lots of sampling and testing.” And the patience of Job.

Once seedlings are available, they are tested for Downey and Powdery Mildew and viruses. Weirdly-shaped, runty or puny “off-types” are culled out - the bad phenotypes. The vigorous chosen few are then transplanted to the field, where over a 3 to 4 year period they’ll be evaluated by the usual criteria (yield, disease resistance, appearance, size, etc).

Can New Technology Speed Up the Selection Process?

As we’ve learned from the People’s Hopmesiter, Dr. Al, the process of breeding, selecting, planting, harvesting, testing and releasing new hop cultivars can take up to a decade. Is there a short cut?

The short answer, again from Shaun, is “yes” for mega crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, but a strong “maybe” for hops. The idea is to associate genetic markers with desirable traits (e.g., citrusy aroma). Once DNA sequences are mapped and understood, scientists could simply study the sample leaf tissue of seedlings for genetic markers (without destroying the plant). They wouldn’t have to wait for the 1 to -2 years it takes for females to yield plump cones before they could run their battery of tests.

The technique, known as “Marker-Assisted Selection,” would allow breeders to plant hundreds and hundreds of female seeds, grow them into small plants, and pluck the leafs for DNA analysis. Using reliable molecular markers from seedlings to identify “home runs” would shorten the breeding program by many years, save tons of money and speed up the process of inventing new “designer” aroma hops.

Of course, all of this is years away. But the journey has begun, thanks to the work of Shaun’s colleague, Dr. John Henning, who has been working on genetic markers, mainly for yield and disease reistanceresistance, at the USDA-ARS Hop Lab in Corvallis, Oregon for the better part of the last decade.

Of course, we’ll still need to somehow associate particular DNA sequences with particular flavors and aromas, a herculean task further complicated by the changes a hop undergoes during its life and brewing cycle, depending on the terroir and brewer.

Variation is the Spice of Life

Dr. Townsend is like a kid in the candy store. “I’m very excited about the program, “ he said. “There’s so much to love about beer and hops, but there’s so much we don’t know.” Shaun is optimistic that with the data from Tom’s hop sensory panels, he can ramp up the process of selecting female and male partners for crossing, the results of which can be tested later on down the road..

Indie Hops shares Shaun’s enthusiasm. Hop science is on the cusp of harnessing the power of new technologies that have the potential for transforming how we go about breeding new hop cultivars. Consumers of craft beer want variety. They want to experience new aromas and flavors, from the big and bold to the faint and subtle. Unlike the industrials, whose mantra is “consistency,” crafties are shooting for the “new and different.”

The OSU breeding program is as big and bold as the richest pale ale. Instead of delivering one thing – more alpha acid – OSU’s finest aim to unlock the hop oils treasure chest. Tucked away in each pouch of mysterious humulus lupulin, there are as many potential flavors and aromas as there are human moods, temperaments, and personalities. This is the start of a brilliant new beer world in which brewers will be free to cook up a diverse roster of beers showcasing endless combinations of new and dazzling aromas and flavors, limited only by the imagination.

Roger Worthington
3/15/10