This live conversation will provide a comprehensive overview of how terpenes can be used to enhance beer flavor, increase process efficiency, and reduce hop loads.

Topics Covered

• What terpenes are and how they shape beer flavor and aroma
• Differences between native hop oils and terpene isolates or blends
• How GCxGC analysis is used to uncover hidden flavor drivers and off-notes
• Why minor compounds can have major sensory effects
• Applications in non-alc, hop water, and lighter beer styles
• How to prototype recipes using terpene blends in benchtop testing
• Integrating terpene products into dry hopping and fermentation
• Real-world case studies from Breakside and Kiitos
• Cost savings and creative gains through hop substitution
• Audience Q&A throughout, moderated by Jamie Bogner

Guests

• Ben Edmunds, cofounder and brewmaster at Breakside Brewery
  
• Patrick Bourque, Director of Brewing at Kiitos Brewing
• Barbara Stone, National Sales Manager at Abstrax

This event is sponsored by Abstrax.

Hop water isn’t a novelty anymore. It’s a high-margin, low-lift segment that’s growing faster than most other segments in the adult-beverage category. For breweries with the equipment and know-how to handle hops, it’s a natural product extension that meets changing consumer preferences without cannibalizing existing SKUs. No alcohol. No calories. No sugar. And with the right tools, no production headaches.

If you’re already using advanced hop products or exploring terpene brewing solutions, you are 90 percent of the way to producing hop water.

Here’s the other 10 percent.

The Foundation: Clean, Controlled, and Customizable

The following base recipe comes straight from our in-house development program. It’s designed for precision, minimal input cost, and maximum flexibility. This version is scaled for 5 gallons (19 liters), perfect for pilot batches or benchtop testing. Multiply everything by three and you’re at standard keg volume.

Basic Hop Water Recipe

5 gal (19 l) water
5–7 ml Abstrax Quantum or Omni (depending on desired intensity)
1.8 g salt (Diamond Crystal preferred)
Citric acid for pH sweet spot between 3.9 and 4.2 (shelf-stable at 4.6 or lower)

That’s your chassis. We’ve found that it is one of the most solid chassis to bolt bodywork onto and can serve as a foundation for artisanal innovation.

Flavor builds on top of this chassis. You can treat it like a hop base, a fruit base, or both. There is a 10 ml flavor ceiling per 5 gallons (19 liters), which gives you room to layer complexity without risking over-saturation. For example:

• 5 ml Strata + 2 ml Pineapple Skyfarm = tropical snap, IPA-adjacent
  
• Flip those proportions and you’ve got a more fruit-forward soda

Why Hop Water Works Right Now

It’s cheap to make. Compared to nonalcoholic (NA) beer or kombucha, hop water costs less in ingredients, labor, and time. No fermentation. No yeast. No tied-up tanks.

It’s fast. Dosing and carbonation can be done in a matter of hours. With water-soluble hop products, you can prototype new flavors by adding drops directly to carbonated water at the bench.

It’s scalable. Abstrax’s terpene and hop-oil products provide shelf-stable, batch-consistent flavors without the extraction loss, haze, or instability of traditional dry hopping.

It sells. According to NielsenIQ and Brewers Association data, the U.S. hop-water market grew from $2.3M to $5.5M between 2020 and 2022. It continued growing another 20 percent year over year into late 2024.

It serves new customers. Millennials and Gen Zers are actively reducing alcohol consumption. Sober-curious drinkers, wellness-minded buyers, and even diehard IPA fans are all reaching for hop water.

Layering Flavor: A Modular Approach

Hop water doesn’t have to be a single-hop showcase, although varietal trials are useful tools for education and tasting flights. The bigger play is in fusion: combining hops and terpenes to create distinct, mood-forward beverages.

This table shows a few of our proven hops and flavor pairings.

These blends can be built and tested within a day, packaged within a week, and on shelves without interfering with your core beverage production. No fermentation time means you can pivot quickly to seasonal flavors, regional collabs, or trending profiles without worrying about time of year or other supply-chain issues.

Behind the Scenes: Why the Inputs Matter

Quantum Brite and Omni aren’t just hop oils. They’re the product of advanced analysis and precision extraction, built to deliver maximum flavor and aroma without the drawbacks of traditional inputs.

• Quantum is essential oil pulled directly from the hop cone. It captures varietal-specific aromatics without bittering acids or light-sensitive compounds that create flavor defects over time.
  
• Omni replicates those same expressions using a fine-tuned blend of botanically derived compounds to scale with consistency.

Neither Quantum nor Omni contains alpha acids, polyphenols, plant material, or any compounds that react with light to produce off-flavors. That means no haze, no astringency, and no fermentation risk. These products give brewers exact control over flavor profiles with a 100 percent utilization rate.

This is especially valuable in hop water, where there’s nowhere to hide off-flavors. Precision is critical, and with benchtop testing possible via direct dosing into carbonated water, you can iterate and finalize recipes in hours.

Commercial Realities

Costs: Lower than NA beer, lower than kombucha, and far lower than traditional fruited sodas or functional beverages.

Speed to Market: Days instead of weeks. Pilot batches can go straight to taproom release or small-scale distro.

Margin: Strong. Many brands price four-packs at $8–12. With COGS this low, the per-barrel return is attractive even at modest volumes.

Brand Benefit: You can experiment, diversify, and stay relevant in a changing marketplace without straying from core values or stretching infrastructure.

Final Word

Hop water isn’t just a fad or a benchtop experiment. This new category is built for the future of brewing. It gives you a direct path to meet the needs of new drinkers, broaden your offerings, and use the tools you already know how to wield. It works with your existing process and expands your ability to craft signature experiences with precision.

Whether you’re starting with a single varietal or layering terpenes to create something more dynamic and memorable, the platform is yours to explore. Every component can be fine-tuned. Every flavor can reflect your unique signature.

If you can brew beer, you can brew hop water. The real question is whether you want to let someone else beat you to it.

Want to get started? Learn more or request a sample kit at abstraxhops.com.

Brewers today face increasingly complex issues, from scaling inefficiencies and flavor drift to changing consumer preferences. Harvest variability and tariffs drive up ingredient costs, while transporting, brewing, and clean-up stretch resources even further. That’s why innovations in advanced hop products and terpene science are a game changer for how breweries tackle these challenges.

Terpenes and other compounds—such as tropical thiols—make up the complex flavor profiles of hops, fruits, herbs, and many other botanicals. The latest research into these aroma compounds has opened the door for easy-to-use, cold-side advanced hop products (CSAHPs) that add greater precision, consistency, and creative flexibility than traditional concentrates or extracts.

At Abstrax, proprietary extraction methods help create advanced hop products that can address all of these brewing pain points and then some. Brewers can realistically replace 20–50 percent of their dry-hopping load, streamline production timelines, and quickly brew with in-demand flavors at scale, all while maintaining the character and complexity that their drinkers expect.

As craft beer continues to evolve, terpenes and advanced hop products like these are becoming an essential component of the modern brewer’s toolkit. Here’s how they work, why they matter, and how they can help you craft better, more consistent beers.

Terpene Science and Superior Advanced Hop Products

You might already be familiar with advanced hop products such as CO₂ extracts for hot-side use and CSAHPs such as the Quantum Series. These tools have brought real benefits to modern brewing, helping reduce waste, improve consistency, and simplify production.

Recent advances have zoomed in on isolated terpenes, allowing brewers to capture and employ key components of hop aroma with greater precision than ever before. Years of analysis show that the smallest details, even trace aroma compounds, can significantly shape the flavor and aroma of your finished product.

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEJpZn_7aEs

For example, refined extraction methods can focus on isolating desirable terpenes and other key flavor compounds while leaving behind volatiles known to cause flavor defects, such as dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS). As detailed in our recent white paper, Defeating DMTS, these targeted techniques create advanced hop products that deliver high-quality aromatics and authentic hop character with remarkable complexity and consistency.

Beyond hops, terpene science supports brewing solutions that give brewers new ways to add fruit-, tropical-, or even cannabis-inspired notes quickly, cost-effectively, and with remarkable precision.

Curious about brewing with Abstrax’s Advanced Hop Products? Talk to an Abstrax specialist today!

How to Use Terpenes for Recipe Formulation and Brewing Efficiency

Terpene and advanced hop products are wildly easy to use—so easy that brewers can incorporate new flavors and aromas while saving time, money, labor, and more because they also come with:

• No yield loss from absorption
  
• 100 percent utilization rate
  
• Zero undesirable plant compounds
  
• No tank sticking
  
• Logistical cost savings
  
• No required carriers
  
• Usability at room temperature
  
• No solid waste removal
  
• And more

In the past, benchtop testing was time consuming. Fortunately, the water-solubility of these products means brewers can instantly understand the flavor impact by dosing directly into packaged beer or carbonated water. This significantly speeds up production time and lets brewers go from recipe ideation to finished product faster than ever before.

Making hop water, for example, already requires less time, less equipment, and fewer resources compared to traditional or NA beers. With terpenes and advanced hop products, brewers can formulate unique flavors, infuse them, and quickly brew hop waters at scale.

Plus, for brewers who want to expand their menus, these features are invaluable and allow them to quickly take advantage of emerging product categories such as RTD cocktails or nonalcoholic beverages.

Brew Trending Flavors, Fruit Fusions, and Novel Aromas

No more waiting for crops to be in season and no more worrying about seasonal flavor drift. Advanced hop products resolve these issues for hops, and terpene brewing solutions do the same for fruits and other botanicals.

Brewing solutions built from the ground up using isolated terpenes give brewers high-intensity, recognizable flavors ranging from bright citrus fruit to dank, cannabis-inspired top notes. Considering the evolving nature of flavor trends, ingredients such as these are pivotal.

For example, when fruit flavors such as watermelon or strawberry are trending, brewers often must use large quantities of fruit to get the desired flavor intensity because of the fruit’s high water content. With highly concentrated terpene brewing solutions, brewers quickly get the bold flavor they want without worrying about pale flavors or refermentation.

Currently, interest in unique, exotic, and seasonal flavors dominates the craft-beverage space. For example, fruit fusions allow consumers to seek out elevated tasting experiences. Consider:

• Experience excitement and adventure with fusions of sweet and salty or sweet and spicy.
  
• Add bold complexity and global appeal with next-gen citrus such as pink grapefruit, blood orange, or key lime.
  
• Experience history through regional flavors such as Georgia peach.
  
• Evoke a specific mood or state of mind—fruit flavors such as watermelon and cherry can convey “girl next door vibes.”
  

When it comes to hop-forward flavors and aromas, brewers can perfectly capture that mojito-like hit of lime in Motueka® or the herbal sweetness in Saaz. They can also enhance hop flavors and craft in-demand fusions by combining different products. For example:

• Adding extra mango notes to Zappa® can create a sweet and spicy fusion.
  
• Combining guava with Krush™ emphasizes tropical characteristics and creates a sense of adventure.

Terpene Brewing Solutions Create Endless Flavor Possibilities

Many brewers are experimenting with New Age flavor experiences by combining compounds from hops, fruit, and gassy cannabis for beverages with entirely new depths of flavor.

Hops and cannabis share many of the same aromatic nuances, which gives brewers a unique opportunity to experiment with flavors that may appeal to consumers from other beverage categories.

Mountains Walking, this year’s Best in Show Champion at the 2025 Skunkworks Lounge, did just that with their Sky Flowers Tropical Pale Ale. This award-winning beer was hopped with Citra® and layered with a combination of Pineapple Express and Mango terpenes.

Whether it’s a low-calorie summer beer, a hop water, or a high ABV IPA, brewers can endlessly combine advanced hop products and terpene brewing solutions to quickly infuse beverages with trending and next generation flavors.

Want to brew with Abstrax’s Terpene Brewing Solutions? Talk to one of their experts today!

Become a Flavor Innovator with Abstrax Hops Beverage Solutions

Abstrax provides solutions for brewers who want to streamline and innovate. We have the resources and expertise to create versatile collections providing everything from authentic varietal-specific hop flavors and aromas to bold, cost-effective fruit and cannabis flavors. The best part? We’re not done.

The beverage industry has a bright future ahead, and we’re always looking for new ways to give brewers a competitive edge. From bigger, bolder flavors to functional ingredients with mood effects (stay tuned), we’ll help you craft your best beverage yet.

Contact us to discuss using terpenes and advanced hop products in your beverage formulations today.