Many buzz words are thrown around in craft beer, often with little/no explanation of what they mean. Are they there to make a beer sound and look pretty? Sure, but most of them also have some level of technical explanation, so we’ll take a look at some of the most popular terms below:
DRY HOPPING
Dry hopping is a process where hops are added late in the brewing process (usually during fermentation) to give beer added aroma and flavour, without adding any extra bitterness to the beer.
DDH
This stands for Double Dry Hopped, which is the easy bit, however there is some debate over what actually counts as being Double Dry Hopped. Some brewers use DDH to show they have hopped a beer twice during fermentation, whilst others use it to say they’ve dry hopped once, but used double the quantity they normally would.
HOT SIDE HOPS
This refers to hops being added during the boiling process, resulting in bitterness being extracted from the hops rather than aroma/flavour.
COLD SIDE HOPS
This refers to hops added after the boiling process, or when the beer is at a colder temperature, which will impart more flavour and aroma to the beer rather than bitterness.
ABV
This is Alcohol By Volume, or rather the strength of the beer which you are drinking. This is a standard measure of the ethanol (or alcohol) content of any alcoholic beverage.
CRYO HOPS
This refers to process which the hops have undergone, creating concentrated pellet versions of leaf hops to give elevated flavours and aromas, theoretically using a lesser quantity to get the same desired effect.
INCOGNITO HOPS
A liquid hop product designed to give highly concentrated flavour, minimising loss and increasing brewing efficiency. Designed to be used alongside pellet or leaf hops during the brewing process.
WHIRLPOOL
A part of the brewing process originally designed to separate out ingredients to promote clarity in beer, whereby the beer was spun at high velocity to throw them out, hence the term whirlpool. Now, the whirlpool is used as an opportunity to add more hops into the beer, utilising the beers temperature to extra more aroma, flavour and bitterness.
HBC
This stands for Hop Breeding Company, and is followed by a sequence of numbers, denoting an experimental blend/crop of new hops. They are given this experimental name until such a point where the hop goes into regular production, then it is given a permanent name.