I am a scent designer at a custom fragrance company and we are working on a Hops fragrance oil that can be used to make candles, soaps, beard oil, and other scented products. We’re working on some different formulations right now, but I was curious what were the most popular types of Hops used in home brewing? We’d like to do four different Hops scents, but want them to be familiar to home brewers so you would understand that one has more citrus top notes, while a different one might have more pine or resin notes. Any feedback about what varietals of Hops to focus on first that would be the most popular? Thanks in advance for your feedback and help on this project!
There are a lot of components in a hop aroma profile. ‘Authentic’ might be difficult to define.
There used to be flavor and aroma wheels on some of the hop producer’s websites that could be helpful in categorizing the flavors and aromas that particular cultivars produce. I recall categories like: citrus, floral, herbal, woody, vegetal, etc. There are plenty more.
Here’s some thoughts:
“Noble” or “German” = Hallertau = spicy and herbal, “beery”
“Floral” or “Czech” = Saaz = carnations, roses, and a bit grassy
“Dank” or “American” = Simcoe, Columbus, or Citra = “cat-box”, grapefruit, pine, pineapple, mango
“English” = Fuggle = earthy/muddy, spicy, and a little floral
That should get you pretty close to breaking it down to just four main types.
There is at least one producer of hop oil out there. I’ve used their product to make my own beard oil, but I didn’t find the aroma to be very “hoppy” once mixed in with the carrier oils. Once I spiked it with some citronellol and beta-pinene it got closer, but still rather muddled. If you looked at some hop oil charts and started playing around with a half dozen or more of the constituent oils, you might be able to get in the ballpark of a hop aroma. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
The compounds I’d start with:
Myrcene
Linalool
Citronellol
Alpha-pinene
Beta-pinene
Limonene
Then build up one that is pine-forward with an orange note. A citrus/floral combo. A tropical-citrus. And so on. You’d probably want some grassy-cannibus notes in the background of all of them.
Good luck! Keep us posted here if you get some good results.