A brief presentation about the use of hops in beer.

1. Hops – the green gold
2013-04-30
Lars Marius Garshol, larsga@bouvet.no, http://twitter.com/larsga
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3. Why do we put hops in beer?
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• To balance the sweetness
– the malt adds lots of sugar
– not all of that is turned into alcohol
– bitterness from the hops keeps beer from being
unbalanced sweet like a soft drink
• To guard against infection
– hops kill bacteria
• Because we like the flavour
– hops can add aroma

4. The beer brewing process
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1. Mashing
– put malts in hot water, to extract sugar
2. Boiling
– boil malt extract for a long time
– add hops during boil
3. Fermentation
– the yeast goes to work
4. Conditioning
– resting period to let the beer mature

5. The hoppiest beer
• The classic hoppy beer is India Pale Ale
– originally created in the 1790s
– contained lots of hops
– exported in great quantities to India for British
officers, hence the name
• Reinvented in the 1980s by US craft
brewers
– dominated by resiny/citric flavours
– very powerful aroma
– very bitter
• Even more hoppy: Imperial IPA/Double IPA
– originally created byVinny Cilurzo
– doubled the malt bill by mistake, decided to
balance by doubling the amount of hops
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8. Hophead
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From Urban dictionary:
“Someone who enjoys really hoppy beers, or
drinks hoppy beers exclusively. Most likely
this person is a beer-geek or craft-brew
drinker.
Hops are what give beer the Citrusy, Piney, or sometimes
what bring out the Herbal or Fruity flavors.
Man, that Stone Ruination IPA turned me into a true Hop-
head.”

9. What are hops?
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• A climbing plant
– latin: Humulus Lupulus
– belongs to the cannabis family
• The useful part is the flower
– also known as “hop cone”
• Hoppy, bitter beers often seen as macho, but:
– only female hop plants produce cones,
– hops contain lots of estrogen (female hormone),
– many women are hop-heads

10. How to grow hops
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12. A difficult crop
• Hops are prone to disease
– downy mildew,
– powdery mildew,
– pests,
– etc etc etc
• Norwegian saying
– “hop plants need to see their owner every day”
• Hops also keep poorly
– aroma fades quickly
– antiseptic qualities also fade fairly fast
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13. London hop prices, 1790-1842
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http://barclayperkins.blogspot.no/2008/10/price-of-hops-1790-1842.html

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UK GermanyUS New Zealand
Czech Republic
World’s 5 Biggest Producers:
1. Germany
2. USA
3. Ethiopia
4. China
5. Czech Republic

15. The rise of West Coast hops
• 1956
– US agricultural researchers attempt to make a hop
resistant to downy mildew
– cross English Fuggle and Russian Serebrianker
– create the Cascade hop
– macro brewers don’t want it; too aromatic
• Then
– the craft beer explosion happens
– to a large extent driven by hoppy west coast IPAs
• Result
– many new hop varieties created on the west coast
– many of these have clear family resemblance
– often called “C-hops”
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16. Hop varieties
• Cascade
– floral citrus/grapefruit aroma
• Centennial
– like Cascade, citrus/lemon and flowers
• Chinook
– mostly a bittering hop
– spicy, pine needles, grapefruit
• Citra
– very new hop: 2007
– became an almost instant hit, very popular
– citrus, tropical fruit, kiwi
• Amarillo
– lovely, lovely aromas
– floral, spicy, tropical fruit (mango) and oranges
• Columbus
– herbal and earthy, citrus if fresh
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17. Beer by the numbers
• International Bitterness Units (IBU)
– a measure of how much alpha and beta acid is in
the beer
– or, if you will, how bitter it is
– except, the sensation of bitterness depends on
more factors
• BU/GU
– alpha/beta acid to sugar ratio
– attempts to measure sensation of bitterness
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18. This evening’s beers
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Brewer Beer ABV IBU BU/GU Hops
AndersVolle Lys IPA 6.9 73 1.12 Chinook, Columbus
AndersVolle Sprint IPA 6.2 58 1 Amarillo, (Columbus)
AndersVolle Black IPA 5.8 82 1.32 Chinook, Columbus, Citra,
Cascade
Konrad
Beiske
American
pale ale
4.6 38 0.69 Centennial, Cascade
Knut
Skomedal
mead 7-8 0 0.0 -