Lesson 6 - Hop Products

At harvest whole hop cones are dried, conditioned and then compressed and baled. Bales are usually 60-80 kg in mass and rectangular to make stacking and storage easier.

The bulk density of the bales is important – more than 150 kg/m³ can result in rupture of the lupulin glands. Damage to the lupulin glands can allow the lupulin to be oxidised.

Hop bales are usually stored in cold rooms (held at less than 5^°C), as this reduces the rate at which soft resins and essential oil components are lost.

Whole hops are still use for brewing but they have the following disadvantages:

• Handling – whole hops break apart easily when transported using mechanical conveyors, breaking open the lupulin glands. They can become sticky and can cause blockages.
• Stability – they go stale more rapidly than other hop products. Bales offer little protection from oxidation. Whole hops are available in oxygen-free foil packages but they still deteriorate more rapidly than other hop products.
• Brewing relevance – most brewers only want lupulin so most of the material in the whole hop is of no value. Some believe the polyphenols provided are undesirable and lead to unwanted haze and astringent flavour.
• Hop utilisation – whole hops have a relatively poor hop utilisation (as low as 10%).
• Solid separation – spent whole hops are bulky and require a dedicated vessel to remove them from wort. Wort/beer losses on whole hops are typically larger than other products.

As technology and the understanding of hop compounds has improved, new products have been developed to make brewing easier and more efficient.

Let us work our way through the various hop products and look in more detail at:

• How they are prepared.
• What they are used for.
• Where they are added in the brewing process.
• What they are composed of.
• Their advantages and disadvantages.

The figure below shows the market share of each type of hop product.

Figure: Market share of each type of hop product (figures from 2023 courtesy of Barth Haas).