Ghetto Hop Dryer

What do ya'll think of this setup? It's in my garage here in the Upstate of South Carolina. It's probably 80s in the garage with the fan on low. Any suggestions for improvement? About how long do ya'll think this should take?

Looks good to me. That fan might blow the hops off. I just let mine on the screen. It takes a few days? Ya can't beat the home grown hops. Those look nice

I also just left mine out to dry on screens in my basement. I borrowed a few window screens and used a few furnace filters. I set those up on top of the metal rack shelving that my brew sculpture is built with. The cones tend to get caught in the cheap fiberglass furnace filters, so I would suggest using the paper kind. You can always buy a few ahead for your furnace and put them to good use while they wait. This year I'll just go with the screens.

I had used screen(sorry no pics just gave my oast to another hbtr) and placed the fan on top blowing down. All cones got cycloned towar the center, and therefore never lost any out the sides. I had used 2x4's for the frames made em 17x17 and used window screen(got enough from my local hardware for like $2 as for scrap pieces from their window/screen dept) was able to make 4 frames and stack em up. this setup dried 15lbs of cones in 24 hours.

Does it sound normal to have around 5 oz of "wet" hops right off the vine and after three days of drying as shown above the net to only be alittle above one? My scale isn't a digital one, but that seemed a bit extreme loss?

That's about right. You want to dry down to between 1/4 and 1/5th of the original weight.

shotputman said:

Does it sound normal to have around 5 oz of "wet" hops right off the vine and after three days of drying as shown above the net to only be alittle above one? My scale isn't a digital one, but that seemed a bit extreme loss?

Click to expand...

yup, you're doing good. 5 oz --> 1+ oz is a little under 80% water loss, which is exactly what you're going for. bag n' freeze those babies, they're done.