What are Hops
Hop grows in creepers all over the world. It belongs to the family Humulus lupulus and shares its genes with Cannabis/hemp/marijuana. This perennial crop is usually harvested around August and processed. Depended on the processing style we get different types of hop varieties.
Beer is essentially made of 4 main ingredients (hops, malt, yeast and water). Yet hops occupy 60-70% of the discussions about beer making. It is used as a bittering agent, to infuse aromas and flavors in the beer.
Types of Hop processing
Fresh Hops or Frozen hops: These are hop cones that were plucked fresh from the plants and frozen. The aromas are best preserved here as there is no processing or drying involved. Hop Pellets also known as T-90 Hops. The hop cones are dried and compressed into pellets. This drastically reduces the volume and also prevents air from seeping deep into the hops. Cryo Hops: They are an advanced freeze-drying technique. It involves pouring liquid nitrogen over fresh hops. The nitrogen separates out the moisture by freezing water into tiny crystals. This technique preserves the aromas the most. As a result cryo hops are usually used in 1/2 the quantity as compared to Hop Pellets. Whole Leaf Hops: The fresh hop cones are lightly kilned to dry out the moisture. after that rather than crushing them into pellets, they are pressed into hop bales. The wholesale hop market usually buys these bales from the farmers and processes them into T-90 pellets.