Daniel Vollmer (1); (1) Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, U.S.A.
Technical Session 10: Dry Hopping
Monday, August 15 • 9:45–11:30 a.m.
Tower Building, Second Level, Grand Ballroom
When hops are added to beer, varying degrees of hoppy aroma persist
as a result of cultivar differences and the point of hop addition.
Dry-hopping is a technique whereby hops are added to beer
post-fermentation to leverage the maximum aroma potential of the hop
oil. Given that hop oil serves as the primary reservoir of aromatic
compounds in the hops, we hypothesized that using hops with greater
total oil content (mL/100 g) will result in higher levels of beer aroma
performance (BAP) for dry-hopped beers. An unhopped beer was dry-hopped
with 23 individual Cascade hop lots and the resultant beer was evaluated
using sensory descriptive analysis. The results demonstrated the
negligible role of total oil content (mL/100 g) as an indicator of BAP.
In fact, there was no correlation between total oil content and overall
hop aroma intensity (OHAI). Therefore, the specific volume of hop oil is
an inadequate indicator of BAP in the dry-hop system. This work
challenges several conventional ideas, namely that using hops with
higher oil content for dry-hopping promotes a greater degree of hoppy
aroma in beer. This research affirms the complexity of how hop materials
relate to sensory aroma performance in beer systems.
Daniel Vollmer is a doctoral candidate in the Food and
Fermentation Science program at Oregon State University under the
advisement of Dr. Thomas Shellhammer. His research examines the
contributing factors in hops that influence dry-hop aroma in beer. He
also has helped develop OSU’s annual Beer Analyses Workshop series,
focusing on quality assurance and control. Daniel is a member of the
American Society of Brewing Chemists and actively participates on the
programming committee. He completed the UC Davis Master Brewers Program
in 2012 and received his M.S. and B.S. degrees in food science and
technology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
