To understand Cryo Hops, you first need to understand hops.
Hops are one of the four main ingredients in beer. Typically, they arrive at breweries in whole cone format or packaged as T-90 pellets. Perhaps you’ve seen the words “T-90” on a hop packet or heard brewers use that language. But, what does T-90 actually mean?
“T-90” stands for “Type 90,” indicating that the hop pellet is made up of 90 percent green matter by weight, with the other 10 percent coming from lupulin. When farmers refer to “green matter,” they’re specifically talking about the outside leafage of the hop cone, often called bract.
“Hop cones are made up of green stuff and if you rip it open the yellow stuff in the middle that looks like pollen are the lupulin glands, where all things we care about live,” says Eric Sannerud, Hop Brand Manager at BSG, one of the major beer industry suppliers.
To take advantage of that coveted lupulin, some hop pellets are packaged with more lupulin than green material. For instance, T-45 hop pellets contain 45 percent green matter and 55 percent lupulin. Often, T-45 hop pellets are considered “lupulin-enriched.” Think of “lupulin-enriched products” like a generic brand term for any pellet that contains more lupulin material than green matter.
Now, different hop companies have proprietary ways of creating these lupulin-enriched products. For example, Hopsteiner makes its Lupulin Pellet line while John I. Haas has a series called LUPOMAX. And Yakima Chief (YCH) makes Cryo Hops.
“All these offerings are more or less the same product with a different brand name,” says Sannerud. “It’s like Kleenex is a brand name for tissue.”