What Are the Benefits of Brewing With Botanical Terpenes?

Our botanical terpenes have authentic, varietal-specific aromas that are affordable, effective, and built to help your brand stand out from the competition. 

Terpenes are the natural hydrocarbons produced by most plants that dictate their innate aroma, flavor, and even some of their effects. “Botanical” terpenes are those that have been extracted from everyday fruits, herbs, spices, etc. 

They’re also one of the most cost-effective, consistent ways to add authentic flavors and aromas to products. This goes for flavors and aromas from herbs, flowers, fruits, and HOPS!

Learn more about the benefits brands can experience by infusing beverages with flavors and aromas from botanical terpenes.

Botanical Terpenes Taste and Smell Exactly Like Varietal-Specific Hops

Once terpenes have been isolated, there’s no difference between botanically derived terpenes and those from any other plant. Our scientists extract terpenes from everyday plants to authentically recreate the aromas and flavors of specific hop varieties for our Optimized Hop Extracts (OHEs).

When it comes to brewing beer, NA beer, hop water, or ANY beverage that depends on specific hop flavors, this is a very big deal. If a consumer is led to believe that a beverage will have the iconic citrus flavors of a hop like Citra®, they’re going to expect the drink to deliver on that advertisement. 

That’s why our Quantum Series starts with hops… and only hops. Using whole hops and pellets, we perform the highest quality extractions in the industry, so you’re JUST getting vibrant flavor and aroma without any undesirable compounds. Basically, we’re squeezing every last drop of flavor and aroma out of the hops for the truest version of varietal-specific hops.

Botanical Terpenes Create Consistent Hop Flavors and Aromas

You CAN use raw plant matter to infuse beverages with flavor and aroma. Honestly, some of the best beers have been dry-hopped with whole flower and brewing wouldn’t be what it is today without this technique.

It’s important to note, however, that making beverages with raw plant matter comes with hurdles. When it comes to nailing the desired flavor and aroma, the biggest hurdle can be consistency.

Terpenes are volatile, and things like weather, soil quality, and farming techniques can alter the way a plant expresses terpenes. That’s why you might notice flavor drift from one harvest to the next. Then, IF you can source plant matter with consistent flavor and aroma, things like rough handling can alter or destroy terpenes. 

Expertly extracted botanical terpenes, however, will be consistent every time. That means fewer variables to contend with during product development, more control over flavor and aroma, and scalability won’t be an issue.

For brewers wanting the same hop flavor and aroma year after year, this is essential. Optimized Hop Extracts that have been replicated using sustainable botanicals will always be consistent and scalable recreations of the original hop with none of the flavor fluctuations associated with whole hops or pellets.

Botanical Terpenes Cut Costs for Breweries

Running a brewery, even a microbrewery, is a costly endeavor. Between the cost of equipment, supplies, ingredients, keeping the lights on, and paying employees a living wage, breweries need all of the savings they can get… but not at the expense of beverage quality.

Fortunately, botanical terpenes like those in our Optimized Hop Extracts can provide essential cost savings while supporting the high-quality beverages brewers want to produce.

• OHEs help mitigate supply issues by providing consistent access to preferred hop flavors and aromas at a significantly lower cost than T90, whole hops, and other extracts.
• OHEs reduce labor requirements by an order of magnitude. That 1,000 lb order of T90 pellets requires shipping, unpacking, refrigerating, and using a total of twenty-two 44 lb boxes. The OHE equivalent is just 4 gallons. That’s 4 gallons that are minimally packaged in lightproof glass and aluminum bottles with no boxes, foil, or other junk to throw away.
• OHEs don’t require workflow modifications, don’t soak up potential beer, and don’t require refrigeration before opening. That means no additional labor to use them, no additional labor to clean gunk from the tank, and no additional labor required to haul them into cold storage before using them.

Do brewers need to completely substitute their hop load for Optimized Hop Extracts? Not at all! 

Yes, you can make a full swap, but that’s actually pretty rare and brewers usually replace 30-50% of their hop load with OHEs. Think of Omni Hop Profiles and Quantum Profiles as another tool in your flavor and aroma arsenal to be used as needed. Plus, offsetting just some of your hop load with OHEs will help reduce costs.

Botanical Terpenes Cost Less Than Whole Fruit and Fruit Purees

Want to add fruit flavors to your beverages? For fruit-forward beers, functional beverages, and hop waters, these flavors are appealing to a wide variety of consumers. While you CAN brew with whole fruit and/or fruit purees, botanical terpenes help you avoid several issues.

First, whole fruit and fruit purees must be carefully sourced to ensure consistency of flavor, water content, etc. Then they have to be transported, stored, and processed. It’s extremely laborious. 

Plus, some fruits, whether as whole fruit or fruit puree, come with unique brewing challenges. Watermelon and strawberries, for example, have delicate flavors that don’t always have a significant impact. Passionfruit can be pretty acidic and will naturally impact the pH of a beverage. 

Sometimes, using blended fruit purees can help balance out these characteristics, but it’s the kind of thing that takes a lot of trial and error. Additionally, whole fruits and aseptic fruit purees can get expensive, and tariffs can make them even more costly. 

Fortunately, botanical terpenes like those in our Skyfarm Series, are significantly less expensive, have greater scalability and ease of use, they’re more sustainable, and they multiply fruity flavor and aroma meaning much less is needed. 

Brew Authentic Cannabis Flavors and Aromas with Botanical Terpenes

As we mentioned earlier, once terpenes have been isolated, there’s no difference between those derived from spices, fruit, hops… or even cannabis! This is big news whether you’re creating a THC drink or simply experimenting with the unique flavor synergy of hops and cannabis.

To recreate the terpene profiles of cannabis cultivars, our chemists studied over 500 botanical aroma compounds via three-dimensional analysis. This allows us to analyze every compound within a plant so we can create the cultivar-specific profiles in our BrewGas Series.

Plus, in addition to authentic cannabis aromas and flavors, these profiles offer brewers several other benefits:

• They contain zero THC or CBD.
• They will NOT get you high.
• TTB-approved.
• Legal worldwide.
• 100% utilization rate.
• Significantly less expensive than cannabis-derived terpenes.

Brewing with true-to-type, botanically-derived cannabis profiles lets you infuse drinks with all the complexities of cannabis flavor and aroma with none of the headache that comes from using flower, extract, or cannabis-derived terpenes.

Abstrax | Brew with Botanical Terpenes for Better Beverages

At Abstrax, we provide novel solutions for beverage manufacturers looking to streamline, innovate, and gain a competitive edge. With our knowledge, technology, and extensive resources, we’ve crafted our collections to make it easier than ever to brew with your desired flavors and aromas.

Not only are our OHEs cost-effective (Quantum is half the price of T90s), but these collections provide an unprecedented level of efficiency. From recipe development and production timelines to ingredient sourcing and COGs, Quantum and Omni are turning the brewing paradigm on its head.

It doesn’t stop there. Add the most aromatic fruit flavor top notes to your drinks with the Skyfarm Series, and capture the authentic aroma and flavor of iconic cannabis cultivars with the BrewGas Series. 

Interested in infusing your beverages with our botanical terpenes? Contact us today and let’s get started!