Breweries have good reasons to be paying attention to hop water. Consumers are drinking differently, non-alcoholic options have become a meaningful part of the beverage conversation, and hop water gives brewers a way to work within a flavor vocabulary they already understand while reaching occasions that beer may not.
Hop Water is also a relatively approachable product to begin developing. There is no fermentation requirement, the ingredient list can be remarkably short, and a brewery already has much of the equipment and expertise needed to start experimenting.
The challenge comes when a promising trial needs to become a repeatable commercial product.
KalHops has a history of development and innovation in the hop water space including research projects into how to make the best and most efficient hop waters. The more recent work looked at many of the same questions a brewery eventually has to answer during development: how pellets compare with hop extracts, whether yeast improves the finished product, how to build back mouthfeel, what happens to hop character over time, and how different formulations respond when storage conditions are less than ideal.
The research reinforced something brewers will recognize from beer. Process decisions are rarely isolated. Changing hop load, contact time, yeast strain or water chemistry may solve one problem while introducing another.
In KalHops’ original research before 2020, adding yeast to a Citra pellet formulation produced positive sensory results, shifting the hop water toward tropical and citrus aromas. When the trials were revisited in 2025 under a different set of conditions, including a lower pH, greater hop load and different yeast strain, the results changed considerably. Fruity and tropical compounds were still present, but the sensory panel also picked up pronounced butterscotch and cabbage notes associated with stressed yeast.
There is useful information in the inconsistency. Yeast can be a valuable formulation tool, but simply borrowing a technique from beer does not guarantee the same result in hop water. The environment is different, particularly when yeast is being asked to perform in water with very little available nutrition. The same consideration applies to hops themselves.
Choosing a process around the finished product
Pellets are familiar to brewers and provide characteristics that can be difficult to replicate through other methods. In hop water, they also require separation of spent material, occupy tank time during extraction and introduce compounds that can influence mouthfeel, haze and color.
Extracts change that equation. Hop aroma and bitterness can be introduced directly into pH-adjusted, deaerated water, allowing development teams to build and compare formulations quickly without waiting through a traditional steeping process. For breweries trying to evaluate several ideas before dedicating production capacity to one of them, that can make development considerably more efficient.
“Because hop waters don’t require fermentation, steeping is the main bottleneck,” KalHops associate scientist Daniel King noted in the research. “Using pre-extracted hop products lets you test multiple recipes in an afternoon and drastically cuts tank time during full production.”
There are tradeoffs. Pellet hops naturally contribute polyphenols, which affect bitterness, astringency and body. Extract-only hop waters do not receive those compounds from the hop material, and the resulting beverage can feel thinner. In its 2025 trials, KalHops experimented with adding a high-polyphenol green tea extract and was able to bring the polyphenol content of the extract-based formulation much closer to the pellet versions.
For a development team, this is a more useful way to think about the choice between pellets and extracts than treating one as a replacement for the other. Start with the product you want to put into market, then determine which combination of ingredients and processes gets you there with the fewest compromises.
Those decisions become even more important when the product leaves the brewery.
Formulation and production influences final flavor stability
Hop character is particularly vulnerable to time and storage conditions. A formulation that performs beautifully during development may spend weeks moving through distribution and retail environments that do not resemble the brewery cooler.
KalHops used accelerated warm aging to compare four 2025 formulations: pellets, pellets with yeast, hop extracts, and hop extracts with added green tea polyphenols. Samples were held at 40°C and compared with refrigerated controls over 12 days.
There was no formulation that remained completely unchanged. That point is important because the research was not designed to produce a perfect winner. It was intended to understand how the different approaches behaved.
The extract-based formulations had similar or better overall flavor stability than the pellet process. The version containing added polyphenols performed particularly well, suggesting a possible way to address both the mouthfeel and stability considerations that come with an extract-based system.
The differences in appearance were more pronounced. Both extract-based hop waters began crystal clear and showed only slight changes after accelerated aging. The pellet formulations became noticeably darker, eventually turning brown under the test conditions. KalHops noted that the difference could have practical implications for packaging, particularly for brands interested in putting a clear product into glass rather than hiding inevitable color development inside a can.
Hop water’s evolving opportunities
None of this suggests that breweries need to make hop water according to a single recipe. The category is still young enough that there should be room for very different interpretations of what a good hop water can be. Some brands will want a product closely connected to craft beer, while others may move further into citrus, tropical fruit, botanicals or other flavors. The opportunity is broad enough to support both.
Consumer research conducted by KalHops also suggests that the reasons people are moving toward non-alcoholic beverages are broader than alcohol moderation alone. In its global study, controlling alcohol consumption was the most common reason consumers gave for increasing their use of non-alcoholic beverages at 32%, followed closely by health at 31%. Lifestyle changes, novelty and variety, and changes in taste preference were also significant factors.
For breweries, those motivations open more possibilities than simply making an alcohol-free substitute for beer. Hop water can occupy its own space, but building a successful one still requires the same discipline breweries bring to any other commercial product: defining what it should taste like, understanding how the process affects it, and making sure the experience holds together after it leaves the tank.
KalHops has collected its consumer research, formulation work and technical findings in The Art & Science of Hop Water, a free guide for breweries and beverage developers. It includes detailed findings from the 2020 and 2025 trials, along with guidance on water chemistry, hop handling, production methods, safety and stability, labeling, and flavor development.
Download The Art & Science of Hop Water to explore the research and apply it to your own development work.