Yakima Chief Hops, a 100% grower-owned network of family hop farms, has been operating for more than 30 years as a resource for brewers, providing solutions-based products and industry leading research. They are advocates of sustainability and meaningful social causes, working to support the environment and communities around the industry.
Their recently completed state-of-the-art cold storage warehouse in Belgium is impressive along with its latest cutting-edge products from frozen fresh hops to water-soluble CBD distillate. And now, Yakima Chief Hops has just completed the installment of a CO2 recovery system within its extract production facility to reduce its environmental impact. One of the products that Yakima Chief Hops offers is CO2 hop extract, and that’s produced using a supercritical CO2 process which extracts soft resins and essential oils contained in hops. The extraction process, however, requires large volumes of CO2.
Collaborating with breweries that utilize CO2 recovery systems, Yakima Chief Hops worked to discover how it would translate into the complex extraction process. They partnered with ICC and Hypro to engineer, design and implement a customized system. This required months of troubleshooting and working with engineers to improve efficiency. YCH is now able to recover, clean and reuse much of the CO2 used to produce hop extract.
“Currently we are capturing more than five metric tons a day of CO2 and redirecting the CO2 liquid back into our extraction system for further use,” said Levi Wyatt, YCH’s Social Corporate Responsibility Coordinator. “This reduces the amount of CO2 emissions from our extract facility by greater than 50%.”