What is Hoppy Coffee?
Hoppy coffee was an idea first conceived in late 2021, pitched to me by Kuba Chwieduk, who is best known for his team’s success in the world aeropress championships (World #1 2017, Seoul, UK #1 2015 and 2017).
Essentially the idea was to post-process green coffee using dry hops, (normally used for brewing beer), matching complimentary coffee and hop flavours and enabling us access to a whole new world of potential coffee flavour profiles.
Hop pellets are added loose to green coffee. After two weeks and several agitations they are removed for roasting
Whilst Kuba remained his usual self-effacing, healthily skeptical self, my first instinct was one of excitement and optimism. I remembered fondly a natural Ethiopian (Burtukaana), from 2017, back when I was roasting at Clifton Coffee, which had a distinct hoppy character. (This coffee actually went on to win the SCA Brewer’s Cup that year in the hands of Dave Cullen).
Kuba and I began experimenting with adding hop pellets to green coffee. Variables we toyed with included:
Ratio by weight of green coffee to hops
Total interaction time (how long the dry hop/coffee blend was left before hops were removed)
Pressure (placing the blend in a pressurised environment vs atmospheric pressure)
Agitation (how frequently the blend was mixed)
Finally after finding the optimum conditions for green coffee to take on the flavour of hops, Hoppy Coffee v1.0 was born.
The results are stunning, imagine your ordinary peachy washed Ethiopian coffee, but with enhanced citrus characteristics, and the fragrance of pine.
IBU = 50 (just a guess)