In an evolving ingredients landscape, flowable hop extracts can capture hop aroma attributes while delivering them to your beer in easy-to-pour bottles. And here, the team at Yakima Chief Hops help outline how Strata is the latest addition to that brewing fabric.
Previously known as formerly YCH 701, HyperBoost is described as a concentrated hop oil extract produced via a novel supercritical extraction technique.
Intended to amplify hop aromatics and increase yield, HyperBoost excels at adding beautiful hop aroma anywhere pellets are normally used, including cold-side applications. It is made from single-hop varieties to deliver variety-specific aroma boosts to your finished beer.
The product is designed to easily pour in your fermenter as a cold side addition, adding an intense saturation of hop flavour to your finished beer.
Most brewers choose to use HyperBoost as a fermenter addition, but it can also be added to the whirlpool. Using HyperBoost in place of traditional pellets can increase finished beer yield.
And at the beginning of this year Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) joined forces with Oregon-based Indie Hops to introduce a new offering to brewers: Strata HyperBoost.
This marks the first collaboration between the two hop suppliers, combining Indie’s well-known and much-loved Strata variety with YCH’s HyperBoost formula.
“Indie Hops has always approached customers with a mutual interest in making great beer, so it’s natural that Indie Hops and Yakima Chief Hops have entered into a product collaboration to bring brewers the first Strata HyperBoost,” explains Ryan Hopkins, CEO of Yakima Chief Hops.
“Indie has been a great partner to the brewing industry in developing hop varieties that bring new and unique flavours to brewers, and they’ve always been a strong advocate for family-owned and operated farms.”
Indie Hops CEO Jim Solberg added that collaboration is a big deal between craft brewers and can be “a good thing between hop suppliers as well”.
Strata, celebrated for its unique aroma profile of passion fruit, grapefruit, strawberry, and wafting cannabis, has become a favourite among modern brewers. Now, with HyperBoost’s concentrated oil formula, brewers can effortlessly incorporate Strata’s flavour profile into beer.
The HyperBoost product was created in response to brewers’ demand to have a highly flowable, concentrated hop product, that would enhance beer flavour and aroma with true-to-style hop attributes.
Brewers using HyperBoost have reported significant gains in beer yield, with some achieving increases of up to 10%. HyperBoost can be used to replace a portion of the hop bill or as an addition to amplify the beer’s overall sensory impact.
“There is a dizzying number of hop oil extracts in the market now. One key factor that attracted us to YCH HyperBoost for our variety Strata is that HyperBoost is derived solely from hops,” adds Solberg. “Real hops grown by real people for brewers to excite customers who really like hoppy beer.”
On the process front, HyperBoost is not intended for kettle additions. For early kettle and bittering additions, we recommend pellets or CO2 extract. DynaBoost carries variety-specific oil and alpha acid content to the kettle and can be used as a late kettle addition.
For whirlpool use, brewers can replace up to 100% of pellets with HyperBoost. We suggest replacing T-90 pellet additions in the whirlpool at a rate of 50:1 by weight (20 g of HyperBoost to replace 1 kg T-90). Your brewery might choose to use more or less depending on beer style or overall goal.
In fermentation, the company adds that HyperBoost can be used as an active or post-fermentation hop addition. Incorporate HyperBoost anywhere in the process you would typically use pellets.
While for dry hop additions, YCH recommends using HyperBoost for 25-50% of the addition and adding T-90 or Cryo pellets for the remainder of the hop charge.
As a dry hop, we suggest starting with a replacement rate of 100:1 HyperBoost to T-90 pellets by weight (10 g HyperBoost in place of 1 kg T-90) to 125:1 (8 g HyperBoost in place of 1 kg T-90).
