Aroma Extract Dilution Analysis of Beers Dry-Hopped with Cascade, Chinook, and Centennial

Abstract

Cascade, Chinook, and Centennial hops are used extensively throughout the brewing industry either individually or in various combinations to add hoppy aroma to beer. This high use of hops, particularly via late- or dry-hopping, creates a need to better understand the chemical contribution of these hop varieties during dry-hopping beer in order to predict brewing performance. Solvent-Assisted Flavor Evaporation (SAFE) and Aroma Extract Dilution Analysis (AEDA) was performed on unhopped beer that was dry-hopped individually with each of these varieties as well as the unhopped base. This technique was used to determine the aroma compounds that were the greatest contributors to the dry-hop character of these hops. The analysis of beer prepared with Cascade, Chinook, and Centennial identified 9, 10, and 11 character impact compounds, respectively. Commonalities were observed among the three varieties regarding 2-furanmethanol, linalool, geraniol, cis-geranic acid methyl ester, and n-decanoic acid in dry-hopped beer. Variation between the hop volatiles found to be important for Centennial and Chinook dry-hop aroma was a function of only a few character impact compounds, whereas Cascade was slightly different, anchored heavily by benzenacetaldeyde. The relative similarities and differences that these three hop cultivars attribute to beer during dry-hopping were revealed by comparing which compounds were important for the characteristic aroma profiles of these cultivars in single dry-hop beers.. This knowledge is important for brewers wishing to introduce potential replacement hops and/or reductions for these hop cultivars in the future and guide the direction of future blending studies.

Keywords:

• AEDA
• beer aroma analysis
• Cascade
• Centennial
• Chinook
• dry-hopped beer

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by funding from Hop Research Council and the Brewers Association. The authors wish to thank Craft Brew Alliance for supplying the unhopped beer for this study, New Belgium Brewing Company for allowing us to utilize their GC-Olfactometry instrumentation, and the Deschutes Brewing Company and the Barth Haas Group for donating the hops for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).