Concentrated lupulin products

What is actually happening

Everything a hop contributes to aroma and bitterness lives in the lupulin glands. The leaf around them contributes vegetal flavour, polyphenol and a great deal of volume, and it soaks up beer.

Freezing the hop and sieving it separates the glands from the leaf. The resulting powder is roughly twice as concentrated, so half the weight does the same work — and takes half the beer down with it, which in a heavily dry-hopped beer is the difference between an acceptable loss and an expensive one.

It is not simply a stronger hop. Removing the leaf removes the grassy, tea-like edge that heavy dry hopping otherwise brings, so the beer reads cleaner as well as more concentrated, and brewers who substitute one for the other by alpha acid alone are often surprised by the flavour change.

What goes wrong here

Risks rather than certainties. This step does not cause these faults; getting it wrong can.

• Grassy — A green, grassy note from extended contact with dry hops or from hops dried badly at harvest.

Styles where this step is decisive

• New England IPA6–7.5% ABV

  Hazy, soft and intensely aromatic: tropical and stone fruit hop character with deliberately low bitterness and a full, juicy body.

• Double IPA7.5–10% ABV

  IPA scaled up: more strength, more hops and more bitterness, while staying dry enough to remain drinkable.

Related steps and concepts

• Dry hopping — Where the loss it addresses is worst.
• Kilning — What happens to the hop before this does.