Rapid New Beer Recipe Development Using Hop Extracts

Create Five Distinct Beers from a Single Wort Stream

Crafting new beers is a challenging and time-consuming process that can take months of recipe development, pilot trials, consumer testing, and scaling up to full production. Not only is this process time-consuming, but it can also be costly and slow the brewery in driving new products to market. However, there is an alternative to these traditional product development methods that can speed up the process and bring new products to market much faster.

At Kalsec, we have been providing the brewing industry with natural extracts from hops and other sources for over 40 years. Our extracts offer ease of use, consistent flavor, and easy product development, making them the perfect solution for brewers looking to streamline their new product development process. By using our range of hop oils, natural flavors and hop acids, it is possible to have rapid product development and shorten the time and effort required for bringing new products to market.

Traditional Product Development Techniques Mean Slower Time to Market

Traditional methods of developing a new beer often involve designing a new recipe, which includes designing malt bills, mash profiles, hop schedules, and fermentation profiles. Once satisfied with a recipe, the next challenge is to scale up the beer to larger brewing systems, which can take several pilot batches to ensure consistency at the higher volume, taking up precious team resources and costly ingredients. Additionally, each of these pilot batches may take 1-2 weeks to reach completion, and when you add up this time, it may take months to dial in a recipe for commercial-scale production batches. Then once a recipe is finalized with all stakeholders, there is the concern of hop and flavor variability caused by seasonality and terroir.

Kalsec Hop Oils Make Small-Scale Tests Possible

Instead of relying on these time-consuming methods, brewers can now launch brand extensions or seasonal variations based on existing successful beers or use our post-fermentation hop oil extracts to develop a handful of new beers in an afternoon. Our unique post-fermentation dosing format allows for small-scale trial and error, where various recipes can be developed and honed by dosing the beers, evaluating them, and adjusting or changing the extract that is added to the beer in real time.

Once one or more recipes are chosen to move forward with, it is easy to dose individual kegs or larger batches for internal evaluation or, using an approach some of our customers have found success with, introduce the recipes in their tap rooms and pubs as a special batch for direct consumer feedback. By utilizing the existing beer stream, the risk of brewing a bad batch and having to dump product is minimized to a keg instead of a full batch of beer. Quick dosing adjustments are easy to do and do not require a new batch of beer to be produced. This scales back the timeline for the overall innovation process from months to weeks.

Increasing the Speed from Development to Consumer Tasting

We recently teamed up with the faculty and students at Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Sustainable Brewing program to demonstrate the power of our portfolio for the brewing industry. Our goal was to brew a single beer and produce five completely different finished beers just by adding various Kalsec post fermentation hop oil extracts. Together we brewed a 1 hectoliter batch of a neutral pale ale, which we then workshopped with various Kalsec hop solution products.

In the development process, the KVCC team pitched three different types of beer that they wanted to see based upon their knowledge of current consumer interests in their tap room along with the Kalsec team’s support and insights. At the end of the workshop, five different recipes were developed using the same starting beer.

• A lighter hoppy pale ale
• A fuller flavored citrussy IPA
• A raspberry sour ale
• A gin and tonic inspired beer
• An experimental winter cooler beer with citrus, wormwood, and a cooling sensation.

The entire innovation cycle from brew day to tap took only three weeks compared to the 10 - 12 weeks it would have taken them previously.

Aaron Ross, KVCC Sustainable Brewing Instructor had this to say, “Through this process, we wanted to illustrate for our students the ability for breweries to maximize their recipe portfolio while efficiently utilizing resources and time. Ultimately, we created a variety of distinct beers to put on tap at our facility for the public and the response from our patrons was very positive. With the ability to diversify our offerings quickly and easily as well as reduce waste and increase the efficiency of resources, the project was a success, and we look forward to working with Kalsec again on these hot topics in the industry.”

"We wanted to illustrate for our students the ability for breweries to maximize their recipe portfolio while efficiently utilizing resources and time."Aaron Ross, Kalamazoo Valley Community College Sustainability Brewing Instructor

Overall, our rapid prototyping using downstream differentiation was able to speed up new product development time while being flexible and modular to formulate to the brewer’s taste. By using Kalsec's natural hop solutions, brewers can develop new beers quickly and efficiently, saving both time and money in the process. Try our range of solutions today and see the difference for yourself!