HPA News – HPA

Sustainable string theory

Pixel3 — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 09:25:00 +0000

More than 3 million strings were deployed to support crop 2019. If they were laid end-to-end they would stretch more than 20,285km, which is roughly half the Earth’s circumference. This sheer quantity means sourcing sustainable strings is becoming more and more important, particularly as our Victorian expansion progresses and the new plantings begin to mature.

We choose to use coir strings. Coir is often thought of as a low-value by-product of coconut production. In most cases, the husks are left on the field, but a small portion are used to produce brushes, brooms, mats, mattresses and string. It is well suited to our farming operations because it has one of the highest concentrations of lignin, making it stronger and better able to withstand all kinds of weather than most natural fibres. It is also 100% biodegradable, which means the strings can be mulched alongside the spent bines and returned to our paddocks where they help to improve soil fertility, retain soil moisture and suppress weeds.

Despite its comparatively low trade value, coir provides significant economic support to populations in regional areas of India and Sri Lanka where women are particularly dependent on its production for their livelihood. Our Horticulture and Sustainability Manager Oliver Ward recently visited these areas to tour our string suppliers’ facilities and ensure they are able to ethically and sustainably meet our increasing production requirements.

The majority of our strings come from Hayley Fibre in Sri Lanka, who are ISO 9001:2015 compliant and a UN Global Compact participant. The remainder of our strings come from Koralage Fibre Exporters in Sri Lanka and Ceres Fibre in India, both of whom are ethical family businesses with a high standard of manufacturing practices. All three suppliers demonstrated a high degree of professionalism as well as good governance, ethics and manufacturing practices. They also have the prospects and ambition to grow sustainably alongside us, which allows us to move toward a more sustainable future with confidence.

To further demonstrate our commitment to a more sustainable future, we have agreed to join the UN Global Compact alongside the other regional representatives of BarthHaas. This is a global initiative that offers businesses a framework to help them incorporate sustainability into their operations, as well as manage and measure their performance against universal management principles linked to the environment, human rights and anti-corruption. Together, we are taking a shared responsibility for a better world by setting meaningful targets and implementing projects across the group’s global network.

Mick Bentley joins the team

jAmieaDMin27 — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:04:06 +0000

We’re excited to announce that Mick Bentley has joined our team as the new General Manager of Sales. Mick has more than a decade of experience in the beer industry, along with a passion for building authentic relationships with customers and colleagues alike.

Mick has spent the last nine years as General Manager of Mountain Goat, driving growth through fostering a high-performance culture and evolving systems for operational excellence. Throughout his career, he’s developed a reputation for scaling sales operations while staying closely aligned with business values and objectives.

An active member of the brewing community, Mick has judged at the AIBAs, attended CBC multiple times, and visited over 100 breweries and beer festivals of all shapes and sizes. His industry knowledge, combined with his collaborative approach, has seen him successfully lead national sales teams, expand distribution channels, negotiate strategic partnerships, and deliver sustained growth.

Mick believes in developing a culture of accountability, innovation, and excellence, and he’s looking forward to connecting with our brewing partners around Australia and the world. His first stop – Drinktec followed by US hop harvest. In the meantime, you can get in touch with Mick at Mick.Bentley@hops.com.au or +61 414 318 183 for a chat about your favourite beer festival or to discuss how HPA can become a better ingredients partner.

Our stance on hop selections

Pixel3 — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 23:51:50 +0000

HPA recognise the important role that hop selections play in the beer industry. We understand flavour profile can differ from season-to-season and lot-by-lot. For this reason, brewers who visit US hop farms are often invited to select the specific bale lots they want to purchase and ultimately use in the brewery. Their decision to offer selections is largely driven by variable quality outcomes due to a large number of independent growers who are spread across diverse geography all contributing to the yield of a single hop variety. You can view a video of sensory experts conducting our crop 2021 US hop selections below as well as listen to our Head of Sales & Marketing Owen Johnston share his thoughts on this topic with Matt Kirkegaard from Brews News here, or you can just keep reading.

You know how some people say making beer is easy because there are only four key ingredients? Well we all know there are a number of things a brewer can do differently to optimise the process specific to their brewery setup, and create a different outcome to their fellow brewers. Growing hops is no different. There are a number of things a grower can do differently to optimise the process specific to their farm. This can lead to significant variability in quality outcomes because of differences in fundamental decisions around fertiliser and irrigation practices, as well as secondary matters such as winter ground cover cropping, weed control, soil compaction, terrain and terroir.

As Oceania’s regional representative of the global BarthHaas group, we are responsible for establishing effective procurement procedures and coordinating a supply chain that will deliver international hops with consistent quality outcomes for our brewing customers. Our role within the global network, the close relationships we hold, and the combined purchasing strength of our contracted brewing customers afford us priority at the international selection tables. This ensures we are presented with quality hops to select from that are supported by significant quantities. To further optimise the outcomes of this process we encourage our brewing customers to regularly communicate which variables they value most and what analytical ranges they want to see in the end product. This is particularly important, since the hops presented at selections are just a small portion of the total crop. Joining us at the international selections tables is an opportunity we offer some of our brewing customers each year to better understand the process, have input into the selected batches and know who else had input into the selected batches, while still being able to hold us accountable for the quality of the end product.

Our involvement in international hop selections may seem contradictory to our decision not to offer Aussie hop selections. On the contrary, we are in a unique situation compared to the international growing regions that are experiencing increasing diversity. HPA are a relatively small, independent, vertically integrated business that has sole custody of our proprietary hops across all stages of the hop production process, from cultivation and growing all the way through to packaging and sales. They are cultivated specifically for our Australian growing regions that produce just 1% of hops around the world. Our farming practices are governed by a no-nonsense quality management system that adheres to the internationally recognised ISO 9001 and HACCP certifications, which ensures best practice and procedural uniformity across both growing regions. The timing of our post-harvest production process also has a particularly significant impact on quality outcomes. Fortunately, our business model and substantial infrastructure capabilities currently allow us to ensure the entire crop is packaged within eight weeks of finishing harvest.

An intimate understanding of our proprietary hops and an exceptional level of quality control over the hops from bine to brewery is our most important point of difference compared to other businesses in growing regions that choose to offer selections. This doesn’t mean we don’t experience some variability in quality outcomes, but we can minimise these variabilities by being in full control of the whole crop from the very beginning to the very end. As a result, instead of offering selections we have made it our mission to deliver the highest possible quality outcomes with the lowest possible flavour variability through blending. This means we distribute equitable hops to all of our brewing customers. Some might consider this approach egalitarian, but it’s our objective to manage our proprietary hops in a way that will deliver the best long-term outcomes and allow brewers to trust their performance in beer.

We undertand our approach to selections does not embrace the nuances of a given hop variety’s flavour profile, which can really excite some brewers. But we also know the majority of our brewing customers would admit they are under a lot of commercial pressure to make consistent beer. No matter how much we might want to celebrate choice and diversity in beer, there is a consumer confidence piece we need to consider. When a beer drinker falls in love with one of our brewing customers beers, whether it be on tap at the pub down the road or off the shelf from their local bottle shop, it’s important that beer tastes the same next time they drink it. This consistency encourages a level of brand loyalty that forms the foundation for future growth. We see it as our role to help our brewing customers achieve future growth by presenting consistent, high quality hops and giving them one less production challenge to face.

All current and potential brewing customers are encouraged to visit our farms during harvest so they can meet our team, better understand our production process, observe our commitment to consistent flavour profiles through quality management, and come to appreciate the connection between brewers and hop growers who really are mutually dependent on one another.

Even COVID-19 couldn’t stop us from completing harvest

Pixel3 — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 11:02:07 +0000

After more than a month of cutting, picking, drying, pressing, pelletising and packaging, we’re pleased to report that we’ve successfully completed hop harvest, and the early results are looking good. We experienced the normal range of variation on forecast yield, which means we’ll be able to meet our contractual obligations across all varieties. At this stage, the oils and alphas also appear to be within the normal range for each variety, so you can expect the same great flavours that you know and love from crop 2020.

It’s been a challenge navigating the evolving sitation surrounding COVID-19. As is the case with most businesses, we introduced a range of new procedures to prioritise the health of our employees and ensure our farms remain virus-free and fully operational. We’ll continue to act in accordance with Government restrictions and recommendations intended to stop the spread of the virus and ‘flatten the curve’ to keep our employees, families and communities safe and healthy.

We know you’ve been flooded with information about COVID-19, so here’s a snapshot of the things you need to know about your hop supply as we continue to adapt to our current circumstances:

We’re in this together

Times of crisis really help put things into perspective, so we’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of of customers, distributors and supporters for their business. Your willingness to communicate openly and remain flexible throughout these tough times will help us meet your needs in a changing marketplace. We look forward to building this connection by overcoming these challenges together.

Rest assured hops are essential

As agriculture is deemed ‘essential business’, our farming operations have not been disrupted, our supply chain remains sound, and our warehouses are operating as per normal. We will continue to monitor the situation and its impact on local and international customers. Regardless of the situation surrounding COVID-19, it is company policy to notify customers when we foresee any potential delays.

It’s (almost) business as usual

We want to assure you that our labour requirements to complete pelletising and packaging this year’s crop will be met. We have strict hygiene measures in place, our teams and shifts will be completely separated from one another, and access has been restricted to essential employees only to ensure our farms remain virus-free and fully operational over this period.

The majority of employees based at our head office are now working remotely, and will continue to operate normal business hours. Access to the office has been restricted to essential employees only, with strict hygiene measures in place.

All domestic and international business travel for our employees has been suspended for the foreseeable future.

We’re always keen to catch up for a beer (online)

Our team are always up for a chat (and a beer) on Zoom or your platform of preference, so get in touch and we’ll set something up.

While nothing can quite replace the benefits of being face-to-face, we’re choosing to embrace our current reality. We want to use online collaboration and conference tools to stay connected so that we can support you through these challenging times as much as possible.

Though most of us are either homebound, cut off from normal work routines, or facing a very uncertain future, we will make it to the other side through equal measures of communication, collaboration and creativity.

Stay safe, healthy and connected.

Tim Lord

Managing Director

Introducing Luna®

jAmieaDMin27 — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 01:44:47 +0000

We’re excited to introduce Luna®, a new flavour hop from our powerhouse breeding program and the next juicy chapter in beer innovation. Luna® is distinguished by its lush mango, dark berry and spicy citrus characteristics, alongside a high polyphenol content that elevates the flavour profile and mouthfeel. It perfectly complements other modern hops and lends itself to many popular beer styles. From Pilsners to IPAs, Luna® offers brewers creative flexibility backed by agronomic reliability.

Our hop breeding program began way back in the 1950s, when we were all about growing bittering hops like Super Pride and Topaz. Then the craft beer movement began, and we shifted our focus to flavour hops like Galaxy® and Ella.

When Dr Simon Whittock took over the program in 2007, he began sorting through our experimental hops in search of lupulin gold. He selected Vic Secret, Eclipse® and Luna® for field trials because they were born from a triploid breeding strategy that consistently delivers climate resistance, high flavour impact and cost-effective brewing performance.

Every year, our agronomy team breed new experimental hops chasing the next big flavour. Very few of those progress from field trials to brewing trials, and even less go on to be commercialised. Those that get the nod, go through more than a decade of development before receiving a name. It’s been six years since we commercialised Eclipse®, and now we’re beyond excited to introduce Luna®.

Just like our customers, our hops are big characters. When choosing a name, we like to consider both the hop’s flavour profile and its position in our portfolio. Luna® seemed like the obvious choice for a hop that is distinguished by lush mango, dark berry and spicy citrus characters, alongside a high polyphenol content that elevates the flavour profile and mouthfeel. It’s smooth. It’s radiant. It’s expansive.

Luna® was created by our breeding program in 2003, through a cross-pollination of high alpha Australian and Liberty hops. It is optimally adapted to our changing climate, with proven agronomic and sensory performance in both Victoria and Tasmania. Initially identified for its early harvest window, meaning it doesn’t overlap with Galaxy® or Vic Secret, Luna® has always performed exceptionally well in brewing trials.

Since 2012, we’ve worked with Lion, Sapporo, Firestone Walker, Stone & Wood, Balter, Little Creatures, 4 Pines and Rocky Ridge, among others, to understand its sensory profile. With an aroma intensity akin to Krush, and a biotransformation potential similar to Galaxy®, Luna® is a joy to experience in the whirlpool and dry hop.

A late whirlpool addition of 1-2g/L (0.4-0.7lb/bbl) accentuates the spicy citrus characters, which can present as marmalade when interacting with darker malts. While a dry hop of 4-10g/L (1.3-3.3lb/bbl) elevates those lush mango and dark berry flavours alongside mouthfeel. It’s quite intense and complex, but very well-balanced and a great foundation for layering other modern hops like Galaxy®, Vic Secret, Azacca® and Mosaic®.

“Luna’s seriously good in beer” says Ross Terlick, Head Brewer at Rocky Ridge. “It creates some beautifully complex notes of spicy citrus on the hot side, and juicy mango on the cold side. I can see Luna becoming a very popular hop. I honestly reckon it’s going to rival Galaxy.”

Luna is currently available in limited quantities, but we plan to progressively double production volume over the next three years, with plenty of capacity to scale operations in response to contracted demand.

“This is a new beginning” says Dr Whittock. “HPA is committed to bringing new Australian hops to market more frequently, selecting for agronomic performance in a changing climate, exceptional flavour impact, and innovative product opportunities. Our goal is to give brewers a competitive edge in the market, and beer lovers a great experience that keeps them coming back time and again.”

We’re inviting brewers to experience Luna® firsthand during this year’s Australian harvest. Every brewer who makes the journey to Victoria’s High Country for a farm tour will receive a limited-edition mixed pack of beers from Bridge Road, Bright Brewery, King River and Mountain Monk that will showcase the hop’s character across multiple beer styles.

Bright Brewery’s annual hop harvest dinner has also been reimagined as the official Luna® launch party. “It’s the perfect setting to celebrate our new hop” say Grace Irwin, Chief Marketing Officer at HPA. “Guests can enjoy a beer or two with our local growers and spin the prize wheel for everything from exclusive merchandise to crop 2026 Luna. It’s sure to be a fun evening that brings together innovative hops, exceptional beer, and the best of the High Country.”

We’ve also partnered with other members of the BarthHaas group to introduce Luna® to international markets. Haas will pour a Luna® beer at the Craft Brewers Conference in April and US harvest in September, and BarthHaas will feature it in beer at Brew Asia in October and their Inspiration Range at BrauBeviale in November.

Both BarthHaas and Haas will also highlight Luna® alongside our other uniquely Australian hops at AusFest – a new series of guided sensory sessions and high-profile collaboration beers launching later this year to coincide with the arrival of crop 2026. Together, these initiatives will bring Luna® directly to brewers around the world.

Learn more about Luna^® here, and contact your local rep to secure your supply today. Available in T90 pellets and Prysma – a liquid addition for integrating flavour throughout the brewing process, without notable bitterness.

2021 Crop Report

Pixel3 — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 22:57:47 +0000

We have completed the 2021 hop harvest, picking 675 hectares that resulted in 1,526 metric tonnes of hops. This was a 44 hectare (6.9%) increase and a 25 metric tonne (1.6%) decrease year-on-year. Despite total yield coming in slightly under expectation, our Galaxy^® yield grew 7.2% year-on-year. We’re excited to share this marks 11 years of continuous growth, with the exception of 2016 when we were hit with significant hail damage.

Eclipse^® looks set to follow in Galaxy^®’s footsteps after exceeding expectations in its second year of commercialisation. Sustainably scaling up Eclipse^®, Galaxy^® and Vic Secret has been the focus of a continuing $35 million expansion in Victoria that will take our total farming operations to more than 800 hectares at completion. All additional acreage will reach commercial maturity by 2024, at which point Eclipse^® is forecast to reach 180 metric tonnes, making it our third biggest proprietary hop.

Impact in beer remains strong, with this year’s average oil content coming in above the 5-year average for all varieties except Enigma^®. These high quality outcomes are on track to continue now we have restructured the business to create a division of Agronomic Services with the purpose of improving yield, quality, and efficiencies across our farming operations. This is an extension of our strategy to grow alongside brewing customers by continuing to offer choice and diversity through the commercialisation of experimental varieties, and supporting successful beers by backing our more popular Aussie hops with significant acreage.

The highly contracted position of crop 2021 means that a very limited amount of hops will be available in the short-term. This situation, together with our expansion project drawing to a close, suggests that forward contracting is now more important than ever for supply security. Brewers are encouraged to communicate their Aussie hop needs sooner rather than later.

2020 Crop Report

Pixel3 — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 11:07:46 +0000

After more than a month of cutting, picking, drying, pressing, pelletising and packaging, the numbers are in. HPA harvested 631 hectares across our three farms in 2020, which resulted in a production volume of 1,554 metric tonnes. This was a 42 hectare (7.1%), 81 metric tonne (5.5%) increase year-on-year across six proprietary varieties – Ella, Enigma, Galaxy, HPA-016, Topaz and Vic Secret – as well as Cascade and Super Pride. Harvest commenced at the start of March and was completed by early April.

The 5.5% increase in overall production volume will allow us to meet all contractual obligations. Yield was a bit of a mixed bag this year. There were some individual performances that exceeded expectations, including notable increases in Galaxy and Topaz as well as a bumper crop of HPA-016 in its first year of commercialisation. We’re particularly looking forward to placing this in the hands of as many brewers as possible in the coming years. The rest of the varieties were down, but stayed within the normal range of variation. This was due to the conditions during the growing season rather than reductions in acreage.

Despite an increase in hectares planted and production volume, the highly contracted position of our 2020 crop means that a limited amount of hops will be available in the short-term. We are continuing to move forward with our Buffalo River Valley expansion to improve supply surety and increase varietal diversity.

The BarthHaas Group Commits to Science Based Targets Initiative

jAmieaDMin27 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:54:34 +0000

The BarthHaas Group joins global movement for climate action by committing to set a near-term emissions reduction target with the Science Based Targets initiative.

Thursday 12 February 2026. The BarthHaas Group has reaffirmed their commitment to a sustainable future of high-quality beer and beyond. The world’s leading supplier of hops, innovative hop products and hop-related services has joined a global community of more than 11,000 companies that are taking meaningful action on climate change. They have committed to set a near-term science-based targets aligned with the 1.5°C pathway, the most ambitious level defined by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to keep global warming below catastrophic levels.

“This reflects our long-standing commitment to sustainable innovation and our responsibility to reduce emissions in line with the latest climate science,” said Laxmi Pandit, Sustainability Manager at John I. Haas. As part of its commitment, BarthHaas will follow the SBTi rule that Scope 1 and 2 targets must cover at least 95% of corporate emissions under operational control. Also, since value-chain emissions often dominate agricultural and processing industries, BarthHaas will also establish a Scope 3 target in line with SBTi requirements.

BarthHaas’ Global Sustainability Group is creating greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and calculating their minimum decarbonization requirements. “We see global group-wide collaboration as an opportunity to advance our sustainability efforts through shared knowledge and complementary resources” said Christian Kammerer, Global Sustainability Coordinator for the BarthHaas group. The next step will be preparing a draft emission reduction roadmap with a 5–10 year target timeframe from the base year that will be submitted to the SBTi for approval later this year.

Different measures will take precedence across the BarthHaas group’s different sites. Some sites are focused on using production waste as biological fuel for heat generation and on expanding photovoltaic systems to generate green electricity. Other sites are considering merging production facilities to leverage synergies and recover process gases. “Horticultural productivity both impacts and is impacted by the changing climate. This makes mitigation
and adaptation key to the continued supply of high-quality hops. Our SBTi commitment will enable us to define decarbonization strategies that are appropriate for our sector. We see great potential for emissions reduction, particularly in the use of renewable energy sources.” said George Webster, Sustainability Manager at Hop Products Australia. Intensified cooperation with suppliers is also on the agenda to align with SBTi targets. Customers and stakeholders will be able to track progress through annual climate reporting via CDP, meeting SBTi’s requirements for transparent annual disclosure.

The SBTi is a collaboration between the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that enables companies worldwide to play their part in combating the climate crisis. They have developed standards, tools and guidance that allow companies to set emission reduction targets in line with climate science.

“By aligning with the SBTi, the BarthHaas group intends to set an ambitious emission reduction target, and we encourage others in our industry to make a similar commitment. Together, we can help reduce global emissions and build a better future for our planet, our communities, and our customers” said Tamanda Whittle, Quality and Sustainability Liaison Coordinator for BarthHaas UK.

New technology separating the boys from the girls

Pixel3 — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 23:00:33 +0000

Hops are dioecious, which means there are male and female plants. Only the mature, unfertilised cones of the female plants are harvested for use in beer, as they produce the yield of acids and essential oils that brewers value for their bittering and aromatic properties. Male plants are used when hop breeders wish to cross varieties and develop new cultivars. The resulting hop seedlings can include male, hermaphrodite and female plants.

HPA have been collaborating with a host of institutions to advance Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) molecular marker technology that will allow hop breeders to identify desireable sex phenotypes earlier in the growth cycle than ever before. This technology will not reduce the time it takes to create, identify and develop a new cultivar. But it will allow us to remove non-target sex phenotypes from the nursery, rather than deploying plants in-field for a minimum of 6 months before being able to determine their sex phenotype. As a result, in-field trials will be more efficient in evaluating individual plants and crossing success.

The research was undertaken by scientists at the Slovenian Institute of Hop Research and Brewing, who selected male specific DNA sequences from an international hop industry DArT collaboration to evaluate their suitability for determining the sex phenotype among seedlings. Nine male specific DArT markers showed complete linkage with the male sex phenotype in three crossing families. Following optimisation, four were successfully converted from DArT to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) markers. From 197 seedlings, there was variable correlation with sex phenotypic data for the individual PCR marker amplifications. By integrating the different markers into a single ‘multiplex’ reaction, they achieved a 100% positive correlation with sex phenotypic data.

To apply this technique to hop breeding program operations it needs to be accurate, fast and cost efficient since it would involve screening hundreds or even thousands of seedlings. To develop a fast and low-cost method, a crude sample DNA extraction technique followed by multiplex PCR was evaluated in 253 seedlings from 14 segregating populations, with no loss of accuracy. The study describes, for the first time, the routine application of molecular markers linked to male sex phenotypes in an intensive Slovenian hop breeding program. The methods described could be employed for screening of sex phenotypes at the seedling stage in other hop programs worldwide, thereby saving resources for desirable female plants.

Click here to read to complete article.

Using hop analyses to optimise the brewing process

Pixel3 — Thu, 21 May 2020 11:21:48 +0000

They say there’s no such thing as a bad beer, but some do taste better than others. We take pride in our hops, and the beers our customers create with them. That’s why quality management is so important to us. We have a range of quality management procedures in place to ensure our farms and facilities are ISO 9001:2015 compliant and HACCP certified. This includes analysing around 3,000 hop samples over the course of harvest, which contribute to more than 25,000 measurements that help us meet customer expectations of consistent hop flavour outcomes year-on-year.

Understanding pre and post-harvest hop analysis is key to producing beer of consistent quality. Hops are a natural ingredient produced by a highly specialised horticultural system in temperate regions around the world, which means they are subject to seasonal variation. Hop analyses give hop growers and brewers alike the opportunity to optimise their processes to achieve consistency and efficiency. This is a very technical topic, so if you don’t have the time or capacity to digest it right now, reach out to your local Sales Rep and they’ll talk you through the high points.

For those of you still with us, the hop sampling and measurement process spans a period of six months. During this time, we go through three phases on quality testing – pre-harvest in-field samples, harvest bale samples and post-harvest packaged product samples:

Pre-harvest sampling tracks the development of hop cones and the accumulation of alpha acids and essential oils across our farms. We systematically sample every paddock across our farms at least three times pre-harvest, with the final sample taking place within 36 hours of the paddock being harvested. The information we receive from these samples confirms whether our planning around harvest logistics is correct, and informs the picking sequence for varieties that cover significant acreage. This picking sequence ensures we capture the best possible representation of each variety year-on-year.

We input proprietary predictive models into a Near-infrared (NIR) analytical system to assess the samples’ alpha acids and oil content. Gland fill, dry matter and cone weight are also measured at this stage. All of these measurements follow a fairly consistent pattern of development in the lead up to harvest, which occurs when the paddock reaches our ideal values. The below graph and associated heatmap provide a visual representation of the day in year that these values are typically reached. However, events such as hot and windy days, heavy rain, flooding or frost can accelerate development.

During harvest we take several composite samples from each lot of hops once they have been baled. Alpha acids and moisture content are the main focus at this point with all measurements produced through NIR. This is crucial to the blending process that enables us to achieve consistent quality outcomes for each variety year-on-year.

Post-harvest we conduct further testing on each lot of final packaged product, including pellets and flowers. The information we receive from these tests is what brewers see on our certificates of analysis (CoAs).

Brewers can use CoAs to anticipate process changes required to achieve consistent brewing results, and to verify compliance with hop specifications. Our hops are supplied in sealed, oxygen barrier laminated foils that have been back-flushed with carbon dioxide and packed in cardboard cartons. Each carton is labelled with variety, producer, crop year, production date, lot identification number, product type, net weight and bittering potential (alpha acid contents and analysis method). There is no standardisation of hop CoA information in the brewing industry. In their most basic form a CoA will cover the same information as the carton labels, but we also choose to include essential oil content, moisture content and agricultural chemical residue reporting.

Each hop analysis has a different siginificance in brewing:

Since hops that are used in brewing are a food ingredient we are required to ensure all typical food safety requirements are met, and can also provide allergen and residue statements if required.

It is also important to remember that hop CoAs and label information describe the hops at the time of packaging. Chemical changes that affect performance in beer may occur if the hops are transported, stored and/or handled improperly at any stage of the supply chain. We work closely and collaboratively with our contractors to ensure this risk is managed effectively, so that our customers can continue making great tasting beer.