Hops

Hardly any major brewery promotes its hop farmer as openly as Bitburger. The "Bitburger Siegelhopfen" grows, according to the brewery, in Holsthum near Bitburg, in the Bitburg-Prüm district of the Eifel, and is part of the recipe. Through the seal with which the brewery guarantees the origin of its hops, it binds the farmers closely to its operation.

The scale of the cultivation is a matter of record. Herbert and Andreas Dick farm around 20 hectares of hops near Holsthum. That's a fraction of Germany's total hop acreage of 18,962 hectares, of which roughly 17,129 hectares are in the Hallertau alone. The Eifel is thus a small hop-growing region, but a visible one.

The brewery group states that it buys the larger share of its hops from the Hallertau in Bavaria. The blend of Holsthum and Hallertau hops is said to give Bitburger Premium Pils its slight bitterness. The brewery doesn't disclose the exact proportions here, so we'll simply say that both origins are used together.

Hops contribute two things: bitterness and aroma. The bitterness comes from alpha acids, boiled at length early in the brewing process. The aroma comes from essential oils added later, so they don't boil off. Bitburger Premium Pils has, according to the manufacturer, 33 bitterness units (IBU), a value that sits in the upper-middle range for a German Pils.

With Eifelbräu Helles Landbier, which the Bitburger Brewery launched in 2021, the brewery's own data sheet notes a second hop addition using the Perle and Tradition varieties. Both are Hallertau varieties. This gives a Helles an aroma more typically associated with Pils.