How does the bitterness of hops go into solution?

Question

Source material will be helpful.

Answer 1

I believe it has to do with the chemical structure of hop acids and water. Since like dissolves like as a general chemistry rule the acid is converted in the heat of boiling in such a way as to dissolve in water-wort. That is a general idea and these sites may help.

http://realbeer.com/hops/aroma.html

http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library...

Answer 2

The boling of the wort causes the hop oils to go into solution in a process called isomerzation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomerizati...

http://nfbl.org/nfbl/educational/HopsInf...

http://www.probrewer.com/resources/hops/...

Answer 3

This subject is very complex and so I will follow suit of the people that answered before me providing source material more than a treaties on the subject.

Basically the hop resins are not soluble in wort. Through heat treatment the resins chemical conformations (shape + orientation) become such that they become increasingly more soluble.

http://ift.confex.com/ift/2004/techprogr...

Actually and somewhat surprisingly Wiki has good information on the topic.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.p...

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4002683...

Through chemcical (CO2) treatment into a liquid extract.

http://www.yakimachief.com/hopproducts/y...

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/tex...

http://www.mbaa.com/TechQuarterly/Abstra...