Environmental and agronomic factors that impact the regional identity of Cascade and Mosaic® hops grown in the Pacific Northwest.

Background: Regional identity is a well-established concept of economic interest that has been identified as a source of unique quality traits of various agricultural products originating from a specific region. In the context of hops, the exploration of regional identity is still at a very early stage despite an increasing global demand for specialized aroma hops to enable more product diversity, especially in the growing craft beer industry. Thus, we conducted a large-scale investigation characterizing the growing environments of Cascade and Mosaic® hops at 39 field locations throughout two important valleys in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States to identify factors that significantly impact hop characteristics and to better understand how these impact hop regional identity.

Molecular Insights into the Contribution of Specialty Barley Malts to the Aroma of Bottom-Fermented Lager Beers.

Specialty barley malts provide unique aroma characteristics to beer; however, the transfer of specialty malt odorants to beer has not yet been systematically studied. Therefore, three beers were brewed: (1) exclusively with kilned base barley malt, (2) with the addition of a caramel barley malt, and (3) with the addition of a roasted barley malt. Major odorants in the beers were identified by aroma extract dilution analysis followed by quantitation and calculation of odor activity values (OAVs).