Stan Hieronymus

New varieties and products on the immediate horizon range from a defiantly intriguing public hop to compounds that might emulate “sticking your head in a bag of weed.” Will you apply the eye dropper, or the sledgehammer?

• New Hop Varieties
• Hop Products
• Middle Finger Hop

Recent experiments at New Belgium could help smaller breweries decide whether the benefits of mid-fermentation dry hopping are worth the potential costs.

• Dry Hops
• Dry Hopping
• Biotransformation

Brewers looking for greater efficiencies and longer-lasting hop aroma, among other things, can find several avenues to explore in recently published studies.

• Hops Insider
• Dry Hops
• Shelf Stability

Tough times are ahead for hop merchants and farmers coping with surplus stocks and stalling demand. After enjoying wider selection and lower prices in the short term, are brewers ready for what comes next?

• Hop Market
• Hop Contracts
• Hop Surplus

There are hops in abundance, but beer sales are unpredictable—it’s no mystery why many small breweries are relying on the spot market. Yet many suppliers are aiming to lure brewers back to more flexible contracts that better suit today’s market.

• Hops
• Hop Contracts
• Spot Market

Having a sensory panel to regularly evaluate your beer is good practice—but what about one to evaluate your hops? Brewers and hop-sensory experts share their best tips on starting up a specialized panel—and careful hop evaluation is something that even the smallest breweries can do.

• Hops
• Sensory
• Sensory Panel

Research into the aroma compounds that best survive the brewing process—and which hops are high in them—has changed how brewers add hops to their IPAs and other beers. As more research emerges, so do more opportunities to improve hop aroma.

• Survivables
• Hops
• Hop Aroma

With hop harvest behind us, now is the time to find unique new varieties (before everybody else knows their names).

• Boutique Hops
• Experimental Hops
• New Hop Varieties

While the numbers are far from final, there were modest steps toward rebalancing the market for U.S. aroma hops. Centennial and Simcoe had a rough year, while rain helped Germany and Czechia avoid a second consecutive disastrous harvest.

• Hops
• Hop Harvest
• Hops Insider

The art of hop blending is getting a nudge from science. Research from Great Britain and Japan identifies hops and compounds that work better when they’re together—and they can also simulate the profiles of more sought-after varieties.

• Hop Blending
• Hop Compounds
• Hop Synergy

Growers have reduced acreage, but that’s only part of a complex story. As the 2023 harvest approaches, balancing the market means reducing surpluses and figuring out how to do a better job of measuring true demand.

• Hops
• Hop Market
• Spot Market

As small-scale brewers warm up to products once viewed as industrial shortcuts, the options continue to widen, and knowledge about how best to use them only deepens.

• Hop Products
• Flowable
• Hop Extracts