This is to inform that Czech Republic hop certification system introduced new hop variety and hop region codes.
This change was done based on the approved list of IHGC (International hop growers convention) list of varieties and their codes.
The Czech Republic was first to introduce the coding system fully through the whole hop certification system.
This means that the hop certification system in the Czech Republic will use the variety and region codes wherever the variety name was used in the past, ie. on the labels on each farmer bale, labels on each hop product packaging, weight list of hop products and also the certificate that goes with each shipment. For the Saaz variety this means that on documents from the certification institution you will find the code SAZ.
This code introduction shall lead to further improvement of the certification and tracebility system as all the systems involved including our company storage system will now work with the same 3-digit code for variety and 3 digit code for the region.
Please find enclosed the statement from the Certification institution (UKZUZ) and also the table with the codes for Czech hop varieties and Czech hop regions.
This system with codes has started working from August 1, 2022. This means that all hops from crop 2022 will already carry the codes. For the crop 2021 or previous crops we still have the original documents and these may change only when we ask for a re-certification of the lot, e.g. when a brewery needs to split the original lot into several smaller ones.
In the commerical communication we shall still use the full variety name and this will be also on the packaging as it is today together with the code.