What Is Hops? And How To Add It During Wort Boiling?

What Is Hops? And How To Add It During Wort Boiling?

The malt, water, yeast, and hops are four main ingredients in beer. 

Although many people get excited about hoppy beers, 

but many of them might not understand what exactly a hop is.

Hops are the flowers, or cones, of a plant called Humulus lupulus. 

Hops help to keep beer fresher and longer, help beer retain its head of foam, 

a key component of a beer’s aroma and flavor, 

and of course add ‘hoppy’ aroma, flavor, and bitterness to beer.

Hops belong to the Cannabinaceae family, it is hardy plants and are grown the world over.

Its main compositions are hop resin, hop oil and Polyphenol.

Hop Resin includes α-acids and β-acid.

α-acids has strong bitter and antiseptic and can improve beer foam stability.

While β-acid is bitter and antiseptic weakness thanα-acids.

Hop Oil can increase the flavor of beer. It was easy to volatile.

So many brew masters often add hops in three times.

Firstly, after boiling 5~15 min, 5%~10% of total.

That is to remove the foam caused by wort boiling;

Secondly, after boiling 30~40 min, 55%~60% of total.

That is to extract of alpha acid and promote heterogeneous in hops.

Thirdly, after boiling 80~85 min, 30%~40% of total.

That way is to extract hop oil and improve the aroma of hop

Polyphenol is not only benefit of wort clarify, but also make the beer cloudy.

Also it needs to control by brew master.

In our brewery, we often use world-famous hop brand, like Saaz Hop, Cascade, Willamette, Citral, Golding, Tettnanger and etc.

Contact with Brewman and share what kind fragrant and bitter hops do you use in your brewery or pub.