Yeah, they climb. Vigorously. Hops can be pinched back to control the growth, with a little hit on flowering. Cross pollination is an issue. If you can get exclusively female plants, do so. Otherwise, I’d grow maybe two strains, and seperate them as much as possible. They like well drained soil, tons of water, lots of sun and lots of room.
That would be horseradish. Hops just go up. And up. And up.
If you can get Cascade or Amarillo rhizomes, they are very well suited for home propagation. Nice and versatile, too.
Sorry for the delay… have been away from work.
Step one- Sanitize carboy an waterlock.
Step two- Pour 4.75 gallons of locally pressed cider into carboy. Make sure it has no preservatives. Almost impossible to find non-pasturized locally…
Step 3- dissolve 3-4 cups of brown sugar in cider, add to carboy.
Step 4- Prep dry yeast (can’t remember what I got last time. Was actually a wet yeast in a vial, from Wyeast… english cider yeast.) with sugar water for about 6 hours. then dump in room temperature cider in carboy. Stir, gently, without making bubbles.
Step 5- Wipe down mouth of carboy, exterior of carboy, resanitize water lock, fill water lock with vodka, seal carboy.
Step 6- After about 3 weeks, rack into 2nd carboy, using sterilized racking cane, tubing, and sanitized carboy.
Step 7- Let cider sit for 6 months. Might clear, might not.
Step 8- Sample it, realize it tastes horrificly bad (like watery applejuice with a rancid aftertaste.
3 times in a row.
The last time I got some sort of growth in my secondary as well, looked like a white spiderweb floating on the cider. win!
Suggestions? advice?
You are *waaay *more advanced than I am, despite having brewed 200+ batches. I just order the kits, boil em up and go! I experiment with different dry-hopping, but I’m strictly novice. No enzymes, no chemestry, no science. I’m half a step ahead of bread-in-jar-in-a-cave.
But, I shit-canned the expensive liquid yeast early on and have had nothing but excellant results with the dry yeast. Faster fermentation, more vigerious out-gassing, predictable results, and a hellava lot cheaper.
Now, that being said:
I have a “concern” about growing hops. I used to throw out my wads of boiled hops into the “yard” (a dry, alkilai desert plane) hoping they would add something to the soil, or at least feed the birds. Funny, but even the chickens wouldn’t touch them. The wife told me to stop it.
Flash forward a couple of years. I’ve now got *something *that grows fast, takes over everything and is a pain in the ass. It looks like hops! Surely its just a weed! Never seen them before I started brewing and don’t see anything like them around where I live. WTF? 
Surely nothing is growing from boiled, pelletized hop plugs? :eek:
It can’t be. I live in an arid high-desert. But what the F are these things? Triffids?
(Enjoying a Mexican Pilsner as I type this. Light, dry, can drink about 4 liters before getting wasted :eek: without the slightest hint of a hangover)
Suggestion #1 - You are using too wimpy a starting mix. The ideal cider should be 45% from one apple, 45% from a more robust apple, and 10% crab apple. If your juice if from Delicious apples, it won’t make good cider. Winesaps are good, as are McIntosh. But the base has got to have some oomph to it.
#2 - Don’t worry about clarity. Once the primary fermentation slows down, rack, let clear maybe 2 weeks at most, and bottle.
#3 - bring your juice to a simmer before you place into primary. Add a cinnamon stick during the simmer. Let cool, covered, then pour into primary and pitch.
Hope this helps a bit.
To the people inquiring about growing hops at home:
Dirty Jobs had an episode about a commercial hops operation. A really clever Doper could probably figure out how to view it.
I had heard that boiling apple cider/juice forced the pectin to change… does that not matter to what I’m trying to do?
I’m not sure what the local orchard is using for their cider mix, I’ll inquire.
And last but not least, how long would you suggest leaving in the bottle to prime?
Don’t boil - just get it up to barely a simmer, enough to kill the random yeasts in the juice. I guarantee whatever mix the local orchard is using, it isn’t right for homebrew cider. You can get custom-crushes done, but it usually involves buying 200 gallons of juice. I just shop at several orchards to get the right ingredients. Start tasting after 2 weeks. When the fizz is to your liking, refrigerate the bottles and drink. Unless you add sorbate or some other yeast killer, cider really isn’t a drink to age. Make it, drink it, make some more!