A high-performance liquid chromatographic separation of hop resins on a commercially available microparticulate silica has been developed. The chromatography involves a new mechanism in hop resin separation. A solvent containing di-n-butylammonium acetate is used. The method gives good separation of a-acid, iso-a-acid, p-acid and humulinic acid, and has been used for the quantitative analysis of a-acid and iso-a-acid in hop extracts and isomerised hop extracts.