The chemistry of hop constituents

Of these constituents, the resins and essential oil are peculiar to the hop and are responsible for its brewing value. In wort boiling tannins, sugars, amino acids, and proteins derived from the hop will go into solution and react as discussed in Chapter 14 but in general the larger proportion of these constituents in beer will be derived from malt. The chemistry of the resins and essential oil will be discussed in this chapter. During wort boiling, the a-acids are isomerized into iso-a-acids but discussion of this most important reaction is deferred until Chapter 14. 

Some facts are never stated upfront in chemistry textbooks. For example, the concept of the existence of indivisible atoms arose as a way of reconciling the paradox of having a finite entity that is composed of an infinite number of constituent elements (Zeno of Elea s paradox). Figure 2.2 shows a graphical representation of this paradox. If a frog is 1 m away from a tree and always hops half the distance between itself and the tree it will take theoretically an infinite number of hops to get there. 

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