Abstrax released a free technical guide called “How to make hop water.” The document targets breweries building non-alcoholic options on the cold side, with a focus on repeatability and process control. It reads more like a production worksheet than a brand story, with benchmarks, workflow order, and data points meant to help small teams move quickly without losing consistency. From the press release:
“Hop water is a natural extension of a brewery’s existing workflow,” said Iain Oswald, PhD, Director of Research at Abstrax. “By starting with a reliable base and applying advanced hop products, brewers can unlock an almost endless number of flavor pairings and aroma complexity. The chemistry is straightforward, the process integrates seamlessly with standard production workflows, and the end product is a clean, vibrant beverage that can showcase the complexity of your hops in a non-alcoholic format.”
Why hop water keeps landing on brewery whiteboards
The guide frames hop water as a way to deliver hop aroma without alcohol, bitterness, calories, or sugar. It also ties the format to the wider moderation shift in the U.S. Gallup’s 2025 tracking found 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcohol at all, and among 18–34-year-olds, about 50% say they drink — down from 59% two years earlier. Abstrax uses that context to argue that breweries need more “adult-coded” options that still feel aligned with house flavor and brand identity.
The hop water numbers Abstrax highlights
Abstrax points to NIQ retail scans that show hop water dollars rising quickly, moving from about $2.3 million in 2020 to $5.5 million in 2022. The guide also cites continued momentum in 2024, noting the category ran up about 20% year over year, with January 2024 about 48% higher than January 2023. For global context, it references syndicated estimates that size hop water at about $57.8 million in 2024 and project growth to over $160 million by 2033. Taken together, the data makes the case that hop water has moved beyond a novelty SKU and into a real “adjacent” lane many breweries can test without tying up fermenters.
The practical heart of the guide: a “foundational” hop water recipe
Abstrax centers the paper on a base recipe meant for repeatable trials and straightforward scaling. It treats hop water like a controlled chassis, not a one-off experiment, and it pushes brewers to lock in water, oxygen, pH, dosing, mixing, carbonation, and packaging in a consistent order. The guide includes concrete production benchmarks, and it emphasizes that teams should set targets first so sensory feedback has real numbers behind it. Download the report to get it!
A workflow breweries can run without new equipment
Abstrax lays out a simple order of operations and explains why it matters: Chill → deoxygenate → acidulate → dose → mix → carbonate → package. The guide argues that this sequence protects hop aroma and keeps oxygen in check, which matters more in hop water because you do not have fermentation and malt character to buffer problems. It recommends dechlorinating and chilling water first, pulling oxygen out in a closed system if possible, setting pH while cold and recirculating, then dosing and mixing under CO₂ with minimal shear and minimal air ingress. It also suggests pulling top and bottom samples to confirm uniform mixing before you package.
Two hurdles it calls “must solve” in hop water
The paper flags two issues that tend to show up early. First, bitterness control can derail the product when teams use pellets or T90s and end up with bitterness that feels harsh in a zero-alcohol base. Abstrax encourages brewers to treat bitterness as a designed constant, not an accident, because some brands may want a bite reminiscent of early West Coast IPA while others want hop aroma with almost no bitterness. Second, the guide calls out flavor defects tied to biomass, including off-notes it describes as boiled or dehydrated vegetal. In beer, malt and fermentation can help absorb or hide flaws. In hop water, those flaws show up louder and faster, which is why the guide spends time on managing defects and choosing inputs that reduce risk.
Where the DMTS research fits in
Abstrax’s hop water guide references sulfur risks and downstream off-notes, which connects to its earlier technical focus on dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS). In a prior Abstrax white paper, the company targeted DMTS as a driver of cabbage-like or meaty notes in advanced hop products and compared hop extracts made with different methods using instrument testing and sensory evaluation. For breweries, the practical takeaway is that cold-side hop aroma inputs can carry very different sulfur risk profiles, and hop water provides fewer places for those faults to hide.
