The Hops Project

In this exclusive edition, we’re exploring the glorious world of hops. We’ll be discovering a variety of different ones from each of the four main hop-growing regions of the world: the USA, Europe, New Zealand and – a little closer to home – dear old England. 

The hop plant itself is one of the most difficult crops in the world to grow, so sensitive is it to the climate that certain varieties can only be grown in their native lands. Given this, the differences between hops from each growing region are considerable and learning about these characteristics is the name of the game with this case of beer.

You’re going to enjoy the tropical juice bombs of the ever-popular US varieties. The classic English styles, used predominantly as bittering hops, are perfectly showcased in the local beer styles of the UK; stout, porter and bitter. The hops we have sourced from New Zealand are a whirlwind of complex and tropical flavours.

We’ve also decided to undertake a special experiment into what the French call ‘terroir’. Given how much the climate, altitude and other factors affect the delicate hop plant, we wanted to see how growing the same variety at two different sides of the Atlantic would impact the flavour. The two Cascade single hop IPAs that we have included in this month’s box are identical – the only difference between the two being that in one the hops were grown in the US and in the other, they were grown in Belgium.

Aside from exploring the fascinating and ever-changing universe of hops, we’re excited to be this month welcoming Chris J.J. Heaney into our fold. Our new ‘Head of Beer’, his name may well already be familiar to you if you’re a Beer52 regular. We first became acquainted with his work as part of our 4th Anniversary Voyage, where he drew upon the inspiration of our trip to the Isle of Eriska to create some highly-rated beers, including a Fennel Gose and a Nasturtium Saison.

Having recently left his position as Head Brewer at the fantastic Partizan Brewery in London, Chris will be joining us for the long haul. He will be helping us to find great new beers for our boxes, to create new and improved tasting notes to go along with every case and, perhaps most excitingly, he’ll be developing exclusive recipes for new beers for the club.

This month, making his debut, Chris will be taking us on this journey around the globe with the mission of helping us all to better understand how hops help to make up the taste of our beers. Given how popular last year’s Elements Project case was, we’re pretty sure that along with Chris’ expert brewing skills, we are going to be in for a hell of a tasty set of beers.

We explore a variety of different techniques used when adding hops, each having its own unique stamp on the beer.

From the traditional addition of hops to the kettle to give the beer bitterness, dry-hopping (adding hops at the end of fermentation) to give the big aroma profiles we all know and love, to the new and emerging techniques like adding the hops during active ferment (creating biotransformation), a process which is becoming increasingly popular in the much sought after DIPA and NEIPA styles