Friday, 10 October 2014 15:34

Hop Lab to brew better beers

Written by 

PLANT & Food Research, in partnership with NZ Hops and Chris Little Engineering, have formally opened a new research brewery at the company's Motueka site.

The 'Hop Lab' has been designed to allow the hops breeding team the ability to create experimental trial brews from promising new hop cultivars in order to evaluate sensory characteristics.

 

Plant & Food Research's hops research programme dates back to the immediate post WW2 era, when the hop industry – and thus the beer industry - was in a fairly poor state with a root rot disease decimating the main American-bred hop cultivar. While early research concentrated on addressing the disease issue, recent breeding targets have focused on the development of "specialty" hop cultivars imparting unique flavours to beer.

Over the past 50 years there have been four hop research directors, the longest serving of which is the current director, Plant & Food Research science group leader, Dr Ron Beatson.

"I guess I've seen a lot of things change in the beer industry over the past 30 years," says Beatson.

"When I started we were just beginning to explore the "specialty" hops for flavour and aroma. Now they form a major part of the industry with cultivars like 'Pacifica', 'Southern Cross', 'Nelson Sauvin', 'Motueka' and 'Riwaka' all doing well in both the domestic market and in exports."

The range of new Plant & Food Research-bred cultivars has coincided with the international craft beer boom and has seen a number of cultivars gain a cult status among craft brewers. A number of cultivars are now highly sought after both within NZ and around the world.

"It's changed from a cottage industry supplying domestic hops to NZ-based brewers to a genuine export success story industry where 85% of our cultivar production is exported to niche markets, such as USA, UK, Germany and Australia just to name a few," says Beatson.

Plant & Food Research's hops breeding programme is supported by a 6-year grant from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment aimed at delivering new seedless cultivars with unique brewing properties to assist in the expansion of both hop growing and the export sales of NZ based craft and premium category beers. The commissioning of the new pilot brewing plant is part of this research, which Beatson describes as the "missing link" in the teams research programme until now.

More like this

Eat more fruit, stay healthy

Nutritionists are urging Kiwis to kickstart their day with a piece of fresh fruit to help improve their health and wellbeing this autumn.

Farewell to Rob Agnew

“We’ve just had the first decent shower in three months,” says Rob Agnew when we call him.

Weather Watcher: Victoria Raw

A one-year Erasmus Programme in France in year three of an agricultural degree introduced Victoria Raw to the wine industry, and changed her life.

Featured

Rural contractors call for overhaul of ag vehicle rules

Following a recent overweight incursion that saw a Mid-Canterbury contractor cop a $12,150 fine, the rural contracting industry is calling time on what they consider to be outdated and unworkable regulations regarding weight and dimensions that they say are impeding their businesses.

NZ seeks certainty on US tariff, says McClay

Trade Minister Todd McClay says his officials plan to meet their US counterparts every month from now on to better understand how the 15% tariff issue there will play out, and try and get some certainty there for our exporters about the future.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

The Hound

A step too far

OPINION: For years, the ironically named Dr Mike Joy has used his position at Victoria University to wage an activist-style…

Save us from SAFE

OPINION: A mate of yours truly has had an absolute gutsful of the activist group SAFE.

» Connect with Rural News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter