Perhaps New River Distilling founders Daniel Meehan and Kiever Hunter should have given Liquid Lupulin its own name long ago. Their concentrated hop oil has earned praise from brewers who have built reputations for making hop-saturated IPAs, as well as the attention of large breweries such as Sierra Nevada.
“It’s one of the few downstream hop oils that smell so good I actually contemplate drinking it straight from the bottle,” says Jake Watt, lead brewer at Grand Fir in Portland, Oregon.
Meehan developed the basic process to create what they now call Liquid Lupulin long before most other flowable products were available, but the two-man company didn’t have the capital to produce and market it widely. Today, the competition for attention is much more intense.
“In the last 10 years, innovation became hyperinnovation,” says Amaey Mundkur, national accounts sales manager for John I. Haas. Haas is still introducing brewers to two new products: LupoCore pellets and Prysma, a flowable aroma product that’s 100 percent derived from hops—including hop-derived emulsion that aids dispersion in wort.
The rate at which new choices continue to arrive can overwhelm a brewer.
“If you are trying to design something new, shoot, there are 20 products for you to consider,” Watt says. “It’s got to the point every company is throwing something out there.”
LupuCore and Liquid Lupulin aren’t products that will suit every brewery, but taking a closer look at them can help brewers decide on the questions they should be considering.