Storage Stability and Vintage-Dependent Aroma Variation in Strata ^® Hops

The stability of hop aroma during storage is a key concern for brewers, yet the relative impact of storage, vintage, and production site on aroma composition remains unclear. This study evaluated Strata® hops across multiple harvest years, farms, and fields, focusing on terpene and polyfunctional thiol profiles. While noticeable variability in composition was observed between vintages and sites, particularly for major terpenes and thiols such as 3-sulfanyl-4-methylpentanol (3S4MP) and 4-sulfanyl-4-methylpentan-2-one (4SMP), leading to distinct clusters in multivariate analysis, these within-cultivar differences remained small relative to varietal differences. Storage under typical low-oxygen conditions appeared to have minimal impact on hop aroma and thiol content, whereas elevated oxygen exposure caused notable losses of monoterpenes and 4SMP. These results demonstrate that Strata® hops exhibit robust aroma stability during storage, and that environmental and agronomic factors, as reflected by combined farm–field effects, rather than storage duration, are the primary drivers of compositional variability.