The official German 2009 hop crop estimates were published on August 19th. Following please find those estimates as well as the final world hop crop figures

There are several options available for brewers to produce beers with hop aroma.

Spring 2008 witnessed an acreage increase that had not been seen for over thirty years.

A prerequisite for the production of lightstable beers is the use of reduced hop products, iso-alpha acids which have been converted into rho-, tetra- and hexa-hydro-iso-alpha acids.

Increased demand for hops worldwide for many years has resulted in the breeding of hop plants and consequent development of new varieties with ever increasing alpha acid concentrations. This trend was accompanied by the introduction of 2 new classifications, one called “High-Alpha varieties”, the other called “Super-High-Alpha varieties”.

For brewers, the most important compounds of hops are the alpha acids. During wort boiling the insoluble alpha-acids isomerise to soluble iso-alpha acids which are the main bittering compounds in beer. Depending on hop variety and hop product, there are several soluble unspecific resins other than the iso-alpha acids which contribute to beer bitterness. The content of “non alpha bitterness” can be shown by comparing the unspecific EBC 7.5 method with the specific HPLC method used for the determination of alpha acids (EBC 7.7). The ratios of these two methods are demonstrated in figure 1 and 2 for fresh aroma and bitter hops: ...

Due to a shortage of hops in crop 2008, many breweries used Isomerized Kettle Extract instead of regular CO2 extracts to save alpha acids. This worked very well and most of the brewers who used IKE for crop 2008 plan to continue doing so for crop 2009, even though hops are again available in larger quantities.

Variations in the alpha content of hops due to weather conditions are well known. However - it is not normally thought that hop oil content can also vary significantly.