But getting closer you will find strong climbing vines twining their way up trellises to a height of 18 to 21 feet with some lateral growth across the top wires, and, hopefully at harvest time, a full growth of cones hiding their precious lupulin.

In the picking process the entire vine is cut and loaded on trucks to be taken to the picking shed where machines remove the cones and separate them from the vines and leaves.

After picking, the hop cones are dried and compressed into 200 pound bales for storage and eventual shipment to the brewery or processing plant. Today pellets and extracts are much more popular because of their ease of use, storage, and shipping, and, substantially better shelf life.

Type 90 pellets are standard pelletized hops. They can be considered as being virtually the same as leaf hops. Nothing is added and nothing taken away except for some moisture and any foreign materials. Weight wise they are about 95% of the weight of leaf hops. They are highly com-pressed in the pellet mill.

Because they take up substantially less space it is much easier to store pellets. Usually pellets are packed in 44 lb. (20 kg.) cartons, although smaller sizes are available. Most frequently U.S. hop pellets are vacuum packed, and European pellets are soft packed with Nitrogen. Both packs are designed to keep out oxygen, the primary enemy of hops over a long period of time. The packs should be kept in very cold storage, or even frozen. In either case they should be stored at an even temperature. Some studies have shown that fluctuating temperatures in the hop storage room can reduce some of the bittering values of the hops over a period of time.

The pelletization process begins by passing the bales of hops through a bale breaker. Any foreign material is physically removed before the hops are converted to powder in a hammer mill.

The hop powder is accumulated in a mixing vessel and then pelletized in a pellet mill. During this process some of the lupulin glands are fractured, which increases their brewing utilization by at least 15% over baled hops.

Type 90 pellets make up one of the largest components of hop products used today. Concentrated pellets (type 45) are manu-factured from enriched hop powder through a mechanical separation process which in-volves extremely cold temperatures. The cones and strigs are separated from the hop powder or lupulin. The concentration can be standardized to the brewer's specs. This solvent free concentration of the hop powder also reduces any residual amounts of nitrates and pesticides which might be present in the original hops.

Stabilized pellets are produced in the same fashion as standard pellets using a patented process. Food grade magnesium oxide is added into the mixers during blending of the hop powder. The addition of the magnesium oxide gives the pellets increased storage stability and improves utilization in the brew kettle.

Isomerized pellets are produced by a unique patented process for converting the alpha acids to iso-alpha acids in the hop pellet. Standard pellet utilization in the kettle usually isn't above 45%, and when the pellets are added late in the brewing process the utilization can be as low as 20%. However Isomerized pellets have a utilization of 60% or more in brewing.

An advantage of Isomerized pellets is that they do not require cold storage to preserve the bittering potential. However, if the brewer wants to preserve the aromatic char-acteristics of the pellets, cold storage would be necessary to preserve essential oils.