Cryo Hops vs T-90 Pellet Hops

Now if you were like me I never knew what the term T-90 pellet hops stood for. After a quick Google, I found it is the way the hop was processed and pelletized. If you want more details about this, you came to the wrong place.

Now, I’ve wanted to pull the trigger on the cryo hops. I’ve had them in my shopping cart multiple times and just never could go ahead and take the plunge. When I saw this experiment come down the pipe, I quickly jumped on it. This way I can try both versions and see if the cryo hops are worth my while. I will say this, I only have 1 hop spider. To make things as similar as they both can be, I didn’t use the hop spider. The clean up on the T-90 hops took almost 4 times the effort because of all of the vegetal matter that was left behind. Will this alone be worth it? Well the hop spider makes this much easier for me, so this isn’t too much of a big deal.

I’m beating myself up because I didn’t take pictures of my dual chilling setup. I split the wort into two pots. I must say that I was quite proud of what I did. Luckily I have two immersion chillers, two pumps, therefore I was able to rig a way to whirlpool the extra pot so I could treat each beer the same.

I ended up doing two tasting sessions with each participant taking a triangle test. One session had 13 participants, the other had 14. I was super surprised at the results. I only had 4 total tasters out of the 27 correctly guess the correct cup. This was very interesting, during the first session I thought it was it was a no brainer. The second session which was 9 days later, I don’t think I could tell the difference.

After I told the participants what the odd cup out was, a good majority said it was down to the odd cup out and the one they actually selected. Another interesting not is that I setup a jockey box at an event (where I had the 2nd session) and a couple of them tried the beers before hand without my knowledge and asked me if those beers were different. I gave some non committal answer to them and proceeded went on my way onto something else. When I gave the triangle test, they could not distinguish the odd beer out.

I really thought the cryo hops would give the beer a brighter and more hop flavor/aroma, but I believe the beers are very similar. Not much difference. Even with me knowing the variable, I don’t think I could pick out the odd sample.

This was a very cool experiment and I am glad I participated in it. Will I buy cryo hops from now on when doing my hoppier style beers? Probably not unless I find them on sale. It’s an awesome idea and yay technology, but in my opinion, I don’t see a huge benefit to it.