I was of the impression that our range was extremely competitive and we have a huge range making us the largest supplier in our local industry, we are discontinuing leaf hops as our working direct with hop farmers has led us to adopt their advise and use pellets. We expanded our warehouse to install an additional walk in fridge to cold store all our hops, we have seen massive growth in the sale of hop pellets ahead of the leaf/cones. When visiting the hop farmers in American and Europe during the 2015 harvest they both felt that hop pellets travelled and stored more consistently when pelletised.
Expect better hop utilisation from hop pellets when recipes call for approximately 10% less hop pellets than leaf plus the less surface area of the pellets helps prevent oxidation so they stay fresher for longer too.
During our visits to a few breweries we also got some interesting tips from brewers, I was surprised to hear a few of them are actually crushing their hop pellets especially in the more hop forward style beers, when sampling I have to say the hop profiles in their beers were impressive, so maybe grinding the hop pellets does actually work..
We use hop pellets in our brewery, simply put the brewer finds them easier to measure and they are cheaper to ship and take up less space. Hop pellets are better in the kettle as they don't soak up as much wort too but we still have home brewers who prefer leaf as they find it suits their system better, perhaps the romantic idea of brewing with fresh leaf hops isn't possible due to the fact we don't have them grown locally, the solution....
We have a range of nylon hop bags and we offer new innovative hop tea bags that infuse well without the issues surrounding blocked filters etc, do you guys still use leaf?
