A new range of products that use yeast to recreate the aroma of specific hops have been launched.

Yops HopPrint from Danish biotech business Evodia are each matched to a specific hop variety and are designed to help breweries maintain the character of their beer.

The first three blends, Ceta, Edra and Cenna, are inspired by hops such as Citra, El Dorado and Centennial with Evodia using fermentation to produce the same aroma molecules that are found in hops.

Each molecule is made separately and then blended to match the profile a given hop leaves in the finished beer. As the aroma comes from fermentation, it turns out the same whatever the weather did to the crop, the company said.

According to Evodia, from tests carried out by UC Davis, an earlier Yops hop blend “closely matched the aroma profile of beer dry hopped with Citra”.

The study, they said. also found that beer treated with Yops retained 55% of its measured terpenes after six months, compared with just 15% for traditionally dry-hopped beer.

“A lot of the brewers we talk to have spent years getting a flagship beer right, often around one particular hop.

“When that hop has a bad year or becomes hard to get hold of, there isn’t much they can do about it, because it can take around ten years to breed a new variety or move one somewhere new,” said Camilla Fenneberg, CEO of Evodia.

“One large brewery recently asked us to recreate a small variety it could no longer get enough of. That’s an extreme case. Most of the brewers we work with keep their hops and let our yeast-made aroma cover part of the dry hop.

“Because we can match the aroma of a specific hop, the beer tastes the way it always has, and it depends a little less on how one harvest turns out.”