Hops have been used in beer for centuries.

They are very talented ingredients! They help to keep your beer fresher, for longer. They help beer retain its delicious head of foam. And of course, they add that “hoppy” aroma, flavor, and bitterness.

But even after being used for so long – even today, the jury is still out on the ideal methodology.

With studies on the effects of different types of hopping methods continuously developing, the industry as a whole continues to make products to help brewers maximise the potential from these precious hops – that the farmers work so hard year-round to produce.

Dry hopping is a popular technique for adding aroma and flavour to hoppy beers and is normally carried out on the cold side of fermentation.

During dry hopping, the lack of a boil prevents the hops from volatilizing and the essential oils from evaporating out. This allows the essential oils to infuse with the beer adding that wonderful aroma and flavour – without additional bitterness.

Hop Cannons help take your dry hopping to the next level.

Here at Bespoke Brewing Solution, we are continuously making design changes to reflect the needs and wants of our clients – and the hop cannon is no exception.

We realize that there will always be room for improvement and we want to deliver the best solution.

Your Bespoke Solution

Our foray into Hop Cannons started in Shanghai, while our team was visiting an Australian brewer during their trip to inspect equipment.

While knocking back a few pints and talking shop, hop cannons came up – and a design session began. They became the first client to use this equipment and have since ordered large units, while adding features each time.

Since then we have shipped units to a number of countries. We are always impressed at how clients are using them!

Using a hop cannon is a great way to get more character from your hops into your beer, in less time, while adding fewer hops.

It provides better efficiency and quality, reduced dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in the finished product, and a safer working environment for the brewers. Ultimately this means less oxygen is introduced to the beer, and there is a more consistent dissolution of hops pellets than with traditional methods.

Employing a hop cannon is an effective improvement to the standard dry-hopping process. Instead of a brewer climbing to the top of a fermentation vessel and dumping a bag of hops pellets into the top port, the hops are safely and conveniently added to the hop cannon vessel.

For larger production breweries, using a hop cannon is much easier than climbing on top of 300BBL+ tanks! It also almost completely eliminates any oxygen introduction in the process as it is a closed, purged system. This is assuming your SOPs are adhered to when purging the equipment and hoses.

Once pellets are loaded in, air gets purged out with CO2/N2. Beer is pumped into the cannon under pressure, the hops pellets are caught in a whirlpool of sorts inside the cannon vessel and dissolve to create a pungent slurry.

This mixture of beer and hops is then pumped from the hop cannon back to the fermentation vessel, and the beer is recirculated incorporating the slurry as it passes.

The result is a consistent, efficient dissolving of the oils and aromas from hops pellets.

Not Just Hops

The Hop Cannon can be used for a number of different botanical/raw material infusions outside of the hop world. 

Product can be recirculated on coffee beans improving contact time needed on the beans, while dramatically shorting extraction time. Fruit purees/juices can be added into the cannon, purged and sent straight into the fermentation vessel for ease of blending.

There are several other additional benefits too:

• Prominent hop aroma increases in the final product.
• Increase in final product volume yield.
• Contact time reduced to hours in comparison to days.
• Monitor aroma and flavour production real time.
• Improved taste stability.
• Removal of hop matter prolonging filtration runs.
• Vessel fully CIP ready.

The effort to continually improve our products based on feedback from our clients is a key priority for our team. 

After all, they are the ones who will ultimately use the equipment on a close to daily basis.