A Yakima Valley native | Yakima Chief Hops (YCH), a 100% grower-owned global hop supplier for the craft brewing industry, has introduced Ryan Hopkins as YCH’s new Chief Executive Officer, promoting Hopkins from Chief Sales Officer.

Hop Products Australia | Hop Products Australia (HPA), part of the Barth Haas Group, has commissioned their new Buffalo River Valley processing facility on Wednesday 26 February 2020 ahead of the commercial hop harvest this March.

Establishing a measurement methodology | The arabinoxylan substance group has been hitherto largely disregarded in the area of beverage analyses and interpretation of technological repercussions, this is due in part to the limited availability of measurement methodology. However, it is a cell wall component that should not be underestimated and is possibly – in addition to β-glucans – another important indicator or technical parameter for cytolysis.

Hop filter cake | Dry hopped beers are a very important factor for the craft beer movement. In order to obtain the desired aroma profile, hops are added in the fermenter or storage tank. It goes without saying that solid particles added have to be removed with minimal losses after aroma extraction. Cake-forming filtration is thus investigated as a very promising alternative for solid-liquid separation processes used nowadays.

Hop research | The 5th International Humulus Symposium takes place in from 2 to 6 June 2020 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Malting barley report | The 2019 spring barley harvest has been largely traded in Europe. France and Great Britain served the market early and with low priced offers. Despite the qualitatively inconsistent and in some cases very weak supply, the European market assumes a surplus and maltsters nearly operate at full capacity.

Technical Support | As usual in December, we’re pleased to inform you about this year’s ratio of linalool to alpha acids.

Climatically different crop years | Callista and Ariana are both new aroma varieties which were recently approved and released for cultivation in 2016. They have already been characterized by the Hop Research Center in Hüll [1] and tested in brewing trials [2]. The results showed that both varieties are suitable for use as aroma hops in late additions as well as flavor hops in dry hopping applications.

Key reaction | Bitterness is a primary flavour attribute of beer. Iso-α-acids are the key constituents of beer bitterness and their formation from the hop α-acids during the boil is often referred to as ‘the key reaction of hops in brewing’. This paper highlights the chemical background of beer bitterness, in particular hop α-acids isomerisation.

Hop Analysis Working Group | The 2019 hop harvest is over. The AHA (Hop Analysis Working Group) announces the average alpha acid values as determined in freshly harvested hops.

Yakima Chief Hops | According to a press release, the US-based hop supplier Yakima Chief Hops recently exported the largest shipment of freshly harvested hops from the Pacific Northwest to South Korea in just one day for the first time in brewing history.