With breweries under mounting pressure to control costs, improve sustainability and reduce waste, there are ingredients innovations on hand to help. Especially when it comes to hops.

When it comes to ingredients there is a wave of innovation in the world of hops dramatically expands a brewer’s toolkit. Hops and hop products that can shape beers with expressive, consistent, complex flavour and aroma.

Back in 1980, a feisty South Island craft brewer named Terry McCashin took on the two big breweries that controlled nearly every aspect of beer production and distribution in New Zealand. Driven by passion and persistence, he founded his own craft brewery and beer brand — Mac’s — setting the stage for the country’s independent brewing movement.

Fast forward to 2014. Supported and encouraged by McCashin, Dr Susan Wheeler recognised that New Zealand’s hop varietals still hadn’t reached their full potential. Brewers around the world were searching for more flavour diversity, yet the local hop industry was dominated by a monopoly of growers who weren’t interested in change. Together, Wheeler and McCashin decided to challenge that system and Hop Revolution was born.

Today, Hop Revolution is one of New Zealand’s largest independent hop growers, cultivating world-class hops from gardens in the Tapawera and Wairua valleys near Nelson. Along the Tapawera and Wairua valleys, Hop Revolution grows and harvests the popular kiwi hop varieties of Nelson Sauvin, Motueka, and Riwaka. 

They say that the particular terroir and garden protocol offers brewers a more tropical expression of these varieties. Increasingly, international attention is turning to their “sleeper” varieties like Pacific Sunrise, Kohatu, and Moutere, which are lesser-known but offer huge potential.

Collaborations with brewers have uncovered some outstanding combinations: Pacific Sunrise pairs beautifully with punchy U.S. hops such as Citra and Simcoe; Kohatu’s smooth, rich character complements Centennial in the whirlpool; and Moutere’s oil-rich profile harmonises with Galaxy and Mosaic. Hop Revolution’s “Turkey’s Pick” and “Hop Rev” blends have exceeded expectations, particularly among smaller breweries who appreciate the convenience of dosing with one blended box rather than opening and weighing multiple bags. These blends are designed in collaboration with brewers, ensuring a balanced, considered sensory profile that highlights the best of the harvest.

According to Gina Chalmers, logistics manager at Hop Revolution, the business is seeing more craft brewers are launching lager programmes and experimenting with hybrid styles such as the West Coast Pilsner, which “perfectly suits” New Zealand’s hop character.

“Locally, Kiwi brewers have been refining sub-6% hoppy lagers for decades, however the New Zealand Pilsner has only recently earned official BJCP recognition, with Riwaka, Motueka, and Nelson Sauvin leading the way. Even modest hot-side additions of these hops deliver an expressive and unmistakably NZ expression,” she explains.

“At the same time, brewers are needing to become more efficient. After years of heavy dry-hopping, many are rationalising to reduce beer wastage and finding that Hop Revolution’s varieties provide higher aromatic yield per kilogram, maintaining impact while improving efficiency.

“To gain further fruit character and aroma intensity from their hops, brewers are using yeast strains that unlock bound thiols and terpenes. While GMO yeasts remain unavailable in New Zealand, many brewers here are turning to highly biotransformative strains that work beautifully with Hop Revolution’s thiol-rich hops. The team’s growing and harvesting practices, using virus-free rhizomes and carefully timed pick windows, are tailored to maximise these flavour-driving compounds.”

Liquid Hop Innovation

At Barth Haas, Prysma is described as the company’s most advanced liquid hop flavour platform, designed to deliver authentic flavors and aromas. It excels at delivering both hop and other natural flavors on one simple 100% hop derived platform with impact and without the inefficiencies of traditional brewing, the company says.

Developed using a unique, state-of-the-art 100% hop derived emulsifier for a stable long-lasting freshness, Prysma can offer true-to-type flavour capturing the delicate volatiles that define hop character while also offering outstanding stability that protects aroma over time while maintaining freshness.

And at Jopen Brewery in Haarlem, Netherlands, is known for its hop-forward beers and creative innovation. But like many brewers, they faced challenges with raw hop variability, beer losses, and process inefficiencies. “To create hop forward beers you obviously have to use a lot of hops, which leads to big losses,” explains head brewer Daniel Schappert.

“Additionally, not all the hops we purchase in big enough quantities to select the batches, which leads to variation in the hops and therefore the beers.” Jopen’s team wanted a solution that would not only preserve flavor and aroma but also improve process control. That’s where Prysma came in.

Jopen brewed one “mother beer” with Titan for bitterness and Tango and Huell Classic for aroma. From there, the wort was split into four different styles: Pale Ale Wit Beer Lager Non-alcoholic Lager Each variant was finished with Prysma, along with Spectrum and PHAs, to test flexibility across beer types. The results? Clear improvements in consistency, yield, and aroma expression.

Commenting on his experience working with the products, Schappert says: “The beauty of Prysma is that you can get the true taste right after dosing and that you can dose it so late. This speeds up lagering time and helps if you have to troubleshoot a beer that turned out less intense aroma-wise than you wanted it to be.”

According to Barth Haas, Jopen’s experiences reflect the broader brewing reality: the demand for hop-forward beers remains high, but efficiency and consistency are equally critical. Traditional pellet hopping alone can’t always deliver on all fronts. “The Prysma 100% hop derived flavour platform gives brewers the tools to: reduce raw material and beer losses, gain control over flavour and aroma consistency, and also accelerate processes like lagering,” they explain.  

Hop-Derived Tools

At Totally Natural Solutions, the business develops hop-derived brewing tools that help breweries deliver reliable hop character, improved utilisation and cleaner process outcomes. The focus here is on the hop components that drive flavour, aroma, structure and stability, and provide them in controlled liquid formats that behave predictably. Some of the company’s portfolio includes HopGain Floe offering late-hop flavour without added bitterness or vegetal load, helping breweries reduce or replace whirlpool pellets while improving recovery and flavour stability.

Also offered is HopPlus, HopAlpha and HopBurst for cold-side hop aroma made from concentrated hop-derived compounds, giving expressive terpene saturation without hop creep, green matter or heavy beer loss. Replacing the need for dry hopping with T90 pellets.

According to Darryl Mills, brewing specialist at TNS breweries are under mounting pressure to control costs, improve sustainability and reduce waste. Rising production costs for energy, labour and raw materials mean losses from hop solids, extended tank time, and variable crop quality have a bigger impact than in the past.

He adds: “Fruit-forward beers, hybrid drinks and alcohol-free styles continue to grow, and all of them depend on clean, stable flavour delivery that holds through filtration, packaging and shelf life. Alcohol-free in particular has moved from experimental to core range, and brewers now look for structural support that allows these beers to stand confidently beside their full-strength counterparts.

Our work responds directly to these pressures. Floe and HopBurst help breweries protect yield and ease the load on filtration. HopAlpha provides precise bitterness without adding complexity to the brewhouse. HopPlus offers stable flavour layering for modern styles. HopZero supports the structure, balance and top-note expression required for high-quality alcohol-free beer.

“Across recent projects, our analytical and sensory teams have worked with established brands to match hop signatures while reducing unit production costs. We also see more breweries creating several products from one fermentation. Our cold-side tools support controlled differentiation without increasing brewhouse demand.”

Breweries, he tells us, want flavour they can trust and tools that support process performance. With the growing overlap between beer and soft drinks, they are engaging across more applications, and our portfolio is shaped to meet that shift.

And looking to 2026 and beyond, Mills has outlines a number of changes he sees coming down the line. “We expect hop use to become more targeted and data-driven. Rather than relying on whole hops or pellets to do everything at once, more breweries will use defined hop components for late-hop flavour, cold-side aroma, bitterness, body and top notes, each controlled on its own terms,” Mills adds.

“After years of rapid variety expansion, the hop market is now tightening, and brewers are feeling that through rising costs and more complex contracts. A more selective use of hop compounds helps improve utilisation, stabilises flavour, and reduces pressure on the brewhouse.”

He concludes: “No and low alcohol remains the fastest-growing space, and drinkers now expect these beers to drink like full-strength versions. That means tools that tackle thin body, worty notes and sweetness in a structured, predictable way. Defined hop components will play a bigger role here, and the growth of draught zero beer adds an extra requirement around microbial stability.

“Our work is moving in this direction. We’re refining hop-derived components that fit cleanly into existing workflows but offer clearer cause-and-effect: a precise and predictable shift in flavour, aroma, bitterness or structure with every addition. The fundamentals of brewing stay the same, but the level of control over hop contribution is rising, and we see that as the next major step in performance.”