A remark on quantum Hochschild homology

Beliakova-Putyra-Wehrli studied various kinds of traces, in relation to annular Khovanov homology. In particular, to a graded algebra and a graded bimodule over it, they associate a quantum Hochschild homology of the algebra with coefficients in the bimodule, and use this to obtain a deformation of the annular Khovanov homology of a link. A spectral refinement of the resulting invariant was recently given by Akhmechet-Krushkal-Willis. In this short note we observe that quantum Hochschild homology is a composition of two familiar operations, and give a short proof that it gives an invariant of annular links, in some generality. Much of this is implicit in Beliakova-Putyra-Wehrli's work.