Better Brewing through (Sensory) Engineering

Consistency is more than a goal in brewing—it’s a benchmark. Creativity keeps the craft exciting. Innovation opens new doors. But it’s the ability to deliver a consistent product, pint after pint, that earns loyalty and builds a brand. However, hops are an agricultural product, and crops vary. From one season to the next, even slight shifts in aroma or acid content can throw off a recipe dialed to precision.

That’s why we at John I. Haas developed Sensory Plus™: a multilayered selection process engineered to deliver true-to-type hop performance, reliably and repeatedly, year after year—and it forms the foundation of our new Next Gen selection process.

Designing for Precision

Sensory Plus doesn’t select for the punchiest aroma or best-looking cones. It’s a rigorously technical process developed to ensure products such as LupoMAX® perform predictably under real brewing conditions.

Every year, hop-oil content can vary wildly, with high oil not necessarily indicating higher quality. Instead of chasing inconsistent and ephemeral highs, Sensory Plus focuses on consistent, above-average oil content and oil quality.

The goal of Sensory Plus is to ensure consistency for both the chemical and sensory profiles of each hop variety. To achieve this, we use a four-step process to select and validate lots that precisely match each profile:

• Raw-material screening: Only the most promising lots of each variety move forward, based on sensory character and key analytical markers.
• Profiling: We use advanced technical analysis and aroma evaluation to define each crop’s unique sensory fingerprint.
• Product-specific lot selection: We select and blend hops to hit tight spec targets that match the profile of the previous year’s product (acids, total oil, etc.).
• Brewing validation: Final Sensory Plus blends are test-brewed and verified for real-world consistency before ever reaching your brewhouse.

The result? Hop pellets that brew the same way every time, with dialed-in sensory character, reduced variability, and maximum efficiency.

Engineered To Be Essential

Sensory Plus began with a simple idea: bring more transparency, quality, and consistency to the hop supply chain, stretching from farm to fermentor. That mission gained momentum in 2020, when we launched our efficiency-boosting LupoMAX pellets. Leveraging internal sensory controls, brewer feedback, and collaboration with grower-partners, we developed a feedback loop to drive consistency and quality improvements year-over-year, raising the median sensory value of any given lot of hops.

Set internal standards → Survey brewers → Validate incoming lots → Collect sensory feedback → Share with growers → Repeat

To support this feedback loop, we completely revamped the Harvest Intake Program to collect more, better data from every lot of hops harvested. By coupling the data with modern analytical techniques and brewing knowledge, we were able to identify consistent patterns in hop-profile variation across growing regions and pick windows.

Because of the consistently high quality of hops we contract, almost every lot finds a purpose. After customer selections, Sensory Plus takes over, blending lots based on both sensory and chemical fingerprints to amplify desirable traits while smoothing out variations.

Sensory Plus preserves and balances Citra’s key attributes across five harvest years—keeping its profile dialed-in while absorbing natural crop variation.

Next Gen Selection

Brewers attending Next Gen selection are presented true-to-type lots of the same variety, with each lot categorized using profiles built on the Sensory Plus process. These specific traits are identified during intake, enabling brewers to confidently select their preferred profile each harvest. This profile will remain consistent year over year, as the Sensory Plus feedback loop continues to deliver the same traits as the original selection.

What started in Yakima is now gaining traction globally. To continually improve the quality and consistency of valuable, unique hop varieties such as Galaxy®, Haas’s sister company Hop Products Australia is in the process of adopting Sensory Plus.

Curious about how Sensory Plus can streamline your brewing outcomes? Connect with John I. Haas and the Brewing Solutions team to schedule your Next Gen selection and learn more about incorporating precision hop solutions such as LupoMAX into your process.