'The "Smart" approach to using hops & hop products in existing brands and NPD'

Brewers have faced adverse market conditions recently, driven by elevated business costs, economic instability and the cost of living crisis. This has caused many businesses to review their end-to-end operations, seeking opportunities to optimise and streamline processes.
Hops can play a crucial role here, to ensure breweries deliver on product quality, consistency, innovation, sustainability and cost control.
Quality and consistency are the priority for every brand. To support this, Hopsteiner‘s breeding programme produces disease resistant and environmentally tolerant varieties, resulting in consistent yield, alpha and oil content. For the brewer, this ensures reliable supply, consistent hop performance in brewery and flavour stability.
Sustainability is key, sourcing raw materials with a lower carbon footprint to contribute towards lowering emissions is a must. There is emphasis on growing more environmentally friendly varieties via agronomic optimisation of fertilisers and pesticides, to deliver lower CO2e/ kg of hops.
Timing of hop dosing can have significant operational and beneficial cost control implications. Equally selection of hop products for bittering, late hop, dry hop and hop oils in to bright beer, will deliver greater product quality and consistency, also reducing hop cost/ hl.
New hop varieties and hop products are driving many innovations and NPD. Shifting from pellets to hop extracts are contributing to greater flavour stability, improved yield and lower beer losses.
Those at the forefront using these approaches will ensure their breweries are fit for the future.