Hop flakes — a revolutionary breakthrough in hops processing — is being driven out of hop farm in Nelson using technology from the medicinal marijuana industry in the US.
There’s been a wealth of hop innovations over recent years, from oils to cryo-hops, to thiol-boosting products like Phantasm. But this is one of the more surprising.
The product is called Flake-It and it’s made by Wairoa Hop Extracts, a company led by hop grower Cam Ealam (Holmdale Farm in Wakefield) and his business partner Rob Goodman.
Flake-it is essentially dehydrated hop oils. It’s described as a “transparent, feather-light and fully water-dispersible hop flake”.
As part of the ongoing trial phase, Sprig + Fern in Nelson brewed two beers with Flake-It — one made from Motueka hops, the other from Nelson Sauvin.
“We capture the compounds contained within hops in a way that protects the volatiles as much as possible,” Ealam says. “Through a unique process the team has developed, this is dehydrated and turned into a hop flake maximising the aroma and flavour that brewers and beer drinkers alike are after.”
The innovation offers many advantages to brewers, including reduced weight for easier transportation, the option of ambient storage, full water dispersibility, and reduced wastage.
Tracy Banner, owner and master brewer at Sprig + Fern, has seen plenty of brewing innovations in her 40-plus years in the industry but even she was suitably impressed by this one.
“I am humbled that they approached us to provide feedback on their two brand new hop flakes … There was a reasonable amount of time spent in the lab, assessing dosing rates, confirming that the flakes fully dissolved, and offered the desired characteristics. The results were quite astonishing,” Banner said.
“I was confident after the lab trials that we could scale up to a full brew of each varietal. Both brews delivered the aroma and flavour that we had hoped for. I think they’re on to something here — the hop flakes offer a number of advantages, and we are certainly keen to explore their use in other products in our range.”
Ealam, a hop grower for nearly 10 years, agreed the flakes “taste absolutely incredible” and added you could actually eat them if you wanted to.
“There’s a wide range of hop oils in the market and I would absolutely say that this is the next step above hop oils. It gives a whole suite of additional benefits over what other hop oils in the market will give you in terms of ease of use, shelf storage at ambient temperatures, longer shelf life, just to name a few things,” Ealam said.
“There’s more trial brews to do but what we’re seeing at this stage is we’re getting anywhere between five to six times the potency from equivalent T90 pellets.”
Ealam said the enhanced flavour has lot to do with the dehydration process that “magnifies and captures the true aroma”.
“For any given hop variety, aroma profile descriptors can be quite variable. But if you take Motueka, for instance, one of the traditional aroma descriptors for Motueka is mojito lime characteristics.
“And this particular product you can actually eat. You don’t go and drink hop oil; you don’t eat hop pellets, but this product you can eat — and when you taste it, you straight away get that classic mojito lime, among other flavours.
“The process captures those aromas and converts it to the genuine flavour.”
Speaking of eating, I wonder are there uses as a food flavouring — and turns out they’ve already done that.
“We’ve tried it in beef sausages and some brewers had a sneak peek of that at NZ Hops’ Harfest. We made a batch of hop sausages and people couldn’t believe it.”
The idea came from the US where it’s been used for medicinal marijuana.
“My business partner Rob helped to develop the technology, and he lives locally in Nelson here.
“It’s through that connection we came up with the application for hops and we’ve jumped on it. We’ve known each other for a long, long time. My wife, before I met her, she used to babysit Rob’s kids. We were sitting around talking about hops and he said ‘I’ve got this stuff that might work …’
“We’ve been granted exclusive access to the technology for hops for the lifespan of the IP.”
Ealam said there are a number of brewers who want to use this product as soon as it’s commercially available.
They are also working on a “bittering flake” that would be made from dehydrating alpha acids in hops.
With no artificial emulsifiers nor solvents used in the process, and with a usage rate that Ealam says makes them cheaper than pelletised hops, it could be a massive leap forward in the industry.
Sprig + Fern’s Hop Flake Hazy with Motueka and Hop Flake Hazy with Nelson Sauvin will be available in both 440ml cans and 888ml bottles at supermarkets and liquor stores nationwide, while a blended version showcasing both hop varieties will be on tap at all Sprig + Fern taverns, as well as other venues across the country from Wednesday May 14.