Surprising Things About Hops for Chocolate Lovers (and everyone else)
by David Nilsen
Hops are a foundational ingredient of beer, and one of its buzziest ingredients. Because of their potentially bold tastes, flavors, and aromas, the character of hops can be divisive, leading many casual or non-beer drinkers to assume they don’t like “hoppy” beer. But hops and their use can be incredibly nuanced and varied. So what are hops, how are they used, and why should it matter to chocolate lovers? Read on to find out!
They’re flowers.
Hops look like little leafy green pine cones, but they’re actually flowers. The hops we use in brewing are the female flowers of the Humulus lupulus plant, which is a climbing bine (basically a vine). Hop flowers are made up of small petals that overlap like scales on a fish around a central stalk or "strig". Concealed under these petals is a waxy yellow substance called lupulin, which contains most of the good stuff we want for brewing.
They can provide bitterness, flavor and aroma, or both.
The bitterness in hops comes from organic acids. The wide range of flavors and aromas we get from hops come from essential oils, and the concentrations and interactions of these oils can be dazzlingly complex. How a brewer uses hops during the brewing process, will determine whether they get more bitterness or flavor and aroma, and which varieties they use will determine which flavors and aromas those are.
There’s no such thing as “hoppy”.
There are well over a hundred commercial hops available now, with more being hybridized and released to growers constantly. There are hop varietals that have been grown and used in brewing since the 19th century, and brand new ones that hit the market each year. Hops can have aromas that are grassy, herbal, earthy, or floral, or they can showcase a wide range of fruity aromas, from citrus to tropical fruits to berries. Name a fruit and there’s probably a hop that smells like it. I’ve led tastings with beers full of tropical fruit aromas and flavors and had attendees who struggled to believe me that there wasn’t actually mango or pineapple in the beer; it was all from the hops. There is no one sensory quality that is “hoppiness”.
They can be used in chocolate.
Many craft chocolate makers partner with craft breweries to release beer-infused or -inspired bars, including many made with hops. Erstwhile Ratza Chocolate had a Hop Citrus bar that highlighted the planty, herbal side of hops. Nostalgia Chocolate and Somerville Chocolate both make bars they aged in fruit-forward hops to absorb their aromas. River-Sea Chocolate has a bar made with Palisades peaches and hop extract and oil. Just like in beer, “hoppiness” in chocolate can mean a lot of different things. You can even use chocolate bars to explain hoppiness!
