![]() ![]() Manufacturers of oils will often say that using post-fermentation oils can also help the shelf life of hop-forward beers. All of the hop oils mentioned in this article have denatured these hop-creep inducing enzymes, allowing for pre-packaged use without fear of further re-fermentation. This re-fermentation can occur in an environment where little yeast is present (when dropping the cone for example), leading to off-flavors like diacetyl. Hop creep, for those unfamiliar, is essentially the ability of enzymes in hops themselves that can free up unfermentable sugars (dextrins), which can lead to re-fermentation. Essentially, efficiency is raised by using highly concentrated oils and less hops to lower the amount of hop material going into the kettle or fermenter and soaking up beer.Īnother perk to hop oils focused on flavor and aroma is their ability to be used post-fermentation without causing any potential for hop-creep. Another obvious benefit to brewers is increasing the yield of actual drinkable beer! I was much less concerned about this as a homebrewer, but getting a full 5-gallons (19-liters) out of an extremely hoppy beer is a nice perk. At Sapwood Cellars, our cold room is stocked full of cans, boxes of pellets, and kegs. Relying heavily on a few of the most recent papers on hop oils, interviews with the hop oil suppliers and academic authors on related studies, and my own personal experience, this article is hopefully a helpful starting point for brewers to start thinking about their own experiments with post-fermentation oil dosing!įirst of all, why even consider hop oils? One small but helpful reason to consider using hop extracts is the ability to store them in a small bottle at ambient temperatures for up to a year. Attempting to research hop extracts and how they perform in beer was surprisingly challenging most of the papers I could find focused more on the bittering capabilities of such hop products rather than flavor implications. Are they supposed to replace dry-hopping all together? Are they just for the bigger breweries concerned with maximizing yields? How do you even get the oils to mix in beer evenly? Are they just for flavor and aroma or do they have other implications like mouthfeel and bitterness changes? These are the types of questions I’ll try to answer in this post. Post-fermentation hop oils fall into this excitement confusion category for me. W hen new hop products hit the market, they are usually viewed with equal amount of excitement and confusion. ![]()
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