Convection oven hops drying...anyone done this?

Ok....so my Centennial hops have a bunch of cones that are just about ready, I might even pick some later today.
I have a pretty fancy Electrolux convection oven that has a dehydrator feature on it. The lowest temp setting is 100deg which I figure is low enough, but has anyone used a convection oven to dry hops, and if so, how long(about) did it take. I know you want around 80% less weight, but I don't want to have to pull them out and weigh them all the time. Being that it's a larger box than a dehydrator I'm thinking I should have more air flow, and quicker drying times since I'll be able to really spread them out.

So....has anyone used this method, and how did it turn out?

100F is the highest I would ever dry but I guess that part would be OK.

The part I would be concerned about is moisture removal. Ovens are designed to hold most of the heat and moisture in so the food doesn't dry out. I believe convection ovens are the same where there is a lot of air flow but its all internal. Very little air leaves the oven and very little fresh air enters.

When drying your hops, this means the oven would quickly reach 100% RH and regardless of the airflow, they would not dry.

Maybe if you prop open the oven? But now you will be significantly heating your house.

Residential oven is going to have issues maintaining a stable 100F given the way they work. Aside from the aforementioned moisture issues, the airflow in a convection oven will scatter your cones all over, and you'll come running because something is burning.

Well I picked some and tried it, and it worked pretty well. took 80% moisture out in 8hrs.:rockin:I guess my oven isn't exactly conventional. It has a built in dehydrator mode with adjustable temp and low speed fan setting, so it did move air out, and didn't scatter the cones. I did keep an eye on this for the first couple hours just in case.

I might let them on the bines a little longer though. They were papery, sprang back after squeezing,had nice yellow glands, but no brown tips. They smelled like Centennial when dried, but had a little green smell to them also.

here's a pic of the oven I used. I let my wife pick one "whatever you want" appliance when we remodeled the kitchen and this was it. Looking back, I like the choice now.

Wow that's a nice oven, I must have overlooked you saying it had a dehydrator mode. For anyone without a fancy oven like that with a dehydrate feature, even low fan will usually blow them all around like a hopnado.

Totally go with the dehydrator mode. The green smell may very well be the smell of gold as I appreciate it to be, but means the residual water (molecular). This means compressing might do well; it's not all sappy sticky baked/broiled paper. It also means you didn't burn these cones up in the process of seeking proper machine aided dehyration/drying. Seems like the ticket. Well done. You'll have more actual lupulin deposits that will work for better alpha retention than air drying the slow way over time, should you decide to compress these and vacuume seal bags and store into a freezer relatively quickly in your next steps.