How to check the quality of hops and products?

The quality inspection of hops and hop products can be divided into two parts: appearance inspection and physical and chemical index analysis

(1) The analysis of physical and chemical indicators should have specified quality standards and be inspected by full-time inspectors. Among them, the physical and chemical indicators of hop granules mainly include water content, α-acid, β-acid, total polyphenols, storage index and disintegration rate; if the laboratory equipment has certain conditions, it is best to be able to analyze three different types of α-acid Components, that is, the content ratio of humulone, added humulone and combined humulone; it would be better if the content of hop oil and several important components in hop oil can be determined, such as humulene, caryophyllene, The content and proportion of farnesene, myrcene and linalool, etc., and the content of these important aroma components should be analyzed for aroma hop granules.

(2) The appearance quality of hops can be identified in the following order:

Open the sealed package of hop granules and take quantitative granules. First, observe its color, it should be greenish-yellow or turquoise, without brown and gray surface of granules; , and should have a sticky, sticky feeling; smell it with the nose, there is a strong fragrance. In addition, take a cup of boiling water and put in three or five hop granules. The granules should disintegrate in a short period of time. After shaking them well, they will be evenly distributed, and there will be a clear fragrance of hops.

The appearance inspection of hop extract should be carried out according to different varieties. For example, the appearance of α-acid extract is yellow-brown paste, because hop extract has been extracted and purified to remove chlorophyll. It is greenish in color; it smells of fresh hops, but there is no peculiar smell or cooked smell, and it feels sticky when dipped in your hands. For another example, the tetrahydroiso-alpha-acid hop extract is a yellow-brown water sample solution, which also has a certain fragrance of hops, but most of them have no sticky feeling.

What are the requirements for hop storage?

(1) All kinds of hop products have certain storage requirements. Generally, granular hops are stored in vacuumized or nitrogen-filled aluminum plastic bags, and hop extracts are stored in sealed plastic barrels or aluminum barrels with relatively high packaging requirements. , but as the storage time becomes longer, there is still the possibility of oxidation, so the hops or hop extract usually need to be sealed and stored at low temperature. All hop products can be stored together and do not need to be stored individually or separately.

(2) The warehouse for storing beer brewing and its products should be kept as low temperature as possible, and the storage temperature should generally not exceed 5°C. High storage temperature will easily accelerate the oxidation rate of hops, rapidly increase the storage index of hops, and rapidly reduce the application value of hops. In addition, the relative humidity of the hop storage warehouse should also be controlled, and the relative humidity should preferably be lower than 60%; try not to have a strong "light source" in the warehouse, let alone stack or store other items with volatile odors.