So, I started a little hop growing area in our yard. There was a spot by an old shed that was a mess. I began by taking the limbs off of an old nasty pine tree, then topping it. I secured a strange looking bird house to the treetop.
Next, I ran para-cord from the treetop to the ground. I cleared the ground of old wisteria roots (that was an enormous pain in the ass) and amended the soil with some composted horse manure.
The purpose of the project is two-fold. First, to make use of a blighted area of our property. Second, so that when people see this and ask if I’m brewing beer, I can say, “No. Why do you ask?”
The funniest part of the project occurred when I had taken all of the low branches off, then began working with a step ladder. I had to get high enough so that I could use an extension ladder. So, my gf came to check on me and I was on the “this is not a step” step, reaching as high up as I possibly could with a chainsaw. She was dissapointed in me.
The young shoots can be picked and steamed then tossed in butter a bit like asparagus. Ive never actually grown the plants as I can pick the shoots and flowers from hedgerows around here.
We planted three or four rhizomes, variety unknown and supplied by a colleague of my wife, in the spring of 2014. They’re planted at the bottom of our backyard deck, and I train the vines to grow up the side of the deck and onto some jute cord that I’ve tied between a stair landing and the roof of the deck. I’ll probably replace the jute cord with something more permanent next spring.
Last summer, their first growing season, resulted in maybe one or two quarts of bracts, and I didn’t bother harvesting them. This summer has been uncommonly wet and cool in Denver, and the vines this year are at least 14 feet long and absolutely loaded with bracts. They’re not quite ready to harvest just yet (I just checked some of the largest bracts yesterday and didn’t see any lupulin and they’re still pretty firm), but I imagine I’ll get at least three or four gallon-sized Ziplock bags full.
I wish I knew what variety they are. I was thinking about using them in a pretty straightforward pale ale this year, as both bittering and aroma hops, to see what they contribute. The vines are really pretty and while I haven’t seen any wildlife this summer, some kind of orb weaver made a huge web next to the vines last summer and I also watched a praying mantis move among the leaves one afternoon.
Don’t be disappointed if they don’t grow much the first year, or if they don’t blossom.
I can’t get to the pictures; the prudery censor at work thinks that looking at pictures of hop plants and strange birdhouses has NO BUSINESS PURPOSE :mad: Weird, I know, but whaddaya gonna do?
They may grow to be 12-15 feet tall, depending on how helpful your amendment was. Since you seem confident standing on a tall ladder, this might not be an issue, but if it is, in future years you can attach the top end of the para-cord using a spring hook or something detachable so you can unhook them at the top and lay them out on the ground for harvesting.
What did you plant? Anybody know if there are cross-pollinating issues if you plant, say, a primary hop next to a finishing hop (i.e., do they end up tasting the same, or both tasting horrible, or both tasting like one of them)?
FYI, your basic zip-lock sandwich baggie holds approx. 1 ounce of hop flowers, so you can bag them, suck out as much air as you can, then toss them in the freezer. Or, just brew a boatload of beer all at once.
We planted 4 rhizomes 3 growing seasons ago and they are now taking over. We even dug up some of them up for friends this spring. Next year we are going to dig them completely up and replant sparingly and then in the future springs remove rhizomes. I don’t know how they grow so well. We don’t fertilize or water them. Freaks of nature!
I finally dug out my hops this year 10 years after planting them. Most of it was my fault - I had hoped I could train them to follow wires that ran along my fence instead of straight up, and the hops were having none of hat. They could grow 6 inches a day and if I didn’t wind them around the wire every day, they were a mess. By the end, they were threatening to pull down the fence. Your setup looks much better.
A few tips from my experience:
Cut them to the ground each fall; they’ll grow back fine
Watch out for spreading. They aren’t quite as bad as bamboo, but they’re close. You’ll have rootlets going in all directions and within a few years you can easily have shoots coming up 10 feet from the original planing location. See wguy123’s comment.
The vines are a little prickly and are a mild irritant for many people, so wear gloves when picking or trimming.
I forgot this part: Way more than a mild irritant! Both my wife and I get itchy, red hives where the vines (or are they bines?) rub on us. Long sleeves and gloves are a requirement. The first time I cut them out for harvesting I went in without a shirt and basically wrestled with the things for a few hours. Was that a mistake! :smack:
I planted some a couple years ago (I don’t know what they are, either). I harvested them last fall for the first time and used them to brew. It turned out pretty weak. I don’t think I’m going to bother harvesting them again. I’m kinda neglecting them, didn’t put anything back up for them to climb.
Did you dry them first or did you wet hop? If you wet hop, you need quite a lot of hops to bitter your beer. You’ll need something like six times the hops by weight in a recipe vs a recipe using the usual dried hops.
I have one plant only, about 6 years old. It gets huge. Last year I had enough hops to fill a 5 gallon bucket!
So I used ALL of it making a single 5 gallon batch of beer, with 12 pounds of a light grain the day after picking. I added 6 ounces about every 10 minutes for an hour.
It was really good, not at all bitter, just very light and fresh and hoppy.
Anyways, just ignore them and let them grow. I seriously do nothing, ever. Which makes up for the fact that harvesting them really sucks.
I set three varieties a couple of years back - nugget, cascade and goldings. Bit of an experiment, as I live in Manchester (UK), where the sun only makes guest appearances, plus my garden isn’t that well aligned for sunshine in any case (Kent, in the sunnier south of the UK, is where hops are grown commerically).
They seem to be doing well, though - all grew and flowered first year, and this second year one of them has gone crazy. I’ll see how they flower and hopefully get a brew on with them.
It’s kind of surprising how much hop growing is going on here! My one variety is Santiam. I need to stop and ask the guy I got the rhizomes from what the second variety is; I was so overwhelmed with his hobby farm that I missed half of what he told me.
There are people on the homebrew forums that have had success with with hops in Texas. Here’s a long thread about it. You might have trouble growing hops for bittering - the alpha acids might not develop well. But you could probably get some decent finishing hops. And that’s good general advice anyway; unless you go to the trouble of sending your hops to a lab to measure the alpha acids, using them for bittering is a crapshoot.
FYI, a friend of a friend has an active kickstarter for a cookbook featuring hops as the main ingredient.
I have a few of her other cookbooks, and they’re good.
If anyone is interested, let me know. I can PM or check with mods about posting it.
Harvest-time bump - anyone picked their hops this month?
I have what looks like a decent amount of hops picked, but prob not enough to go through the trouble to dry them. Been reading up on oasts and the like, and it sounds like a bit of a project. Given pulykamell’s comment above that you need a lot more if you’re brewing with the fresh-picked hop, I probably only have enough to do 2 brews.
Does anyone know how long they last, non-dried? They’re just in a sealed tupperwear box at the moment.
