Newb harvester help please. Pics included

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sunvalleylaw

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Trying to harvest hops for the first time. Here is my plant. I have no idea what variety. A friend gave me the plant several years ago. I tried a couple years ago to harvest, but waited just that much too long, and they were cooked.

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It is on a fence. This is the more directly sunny side. There is a whole other side to this fence where the hops get a little less direct sun.

Here is what I harvested so far.

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I thought I might leave the rest a day or two or three more, as they are not all that papery feeling yet, and do not pull easily from the vine.

But what do you guys think looking at these pics? Should I just go for it and pick 'em all? Or wait and harvest a few more each day?

Also, there are some little white flies that are around the plant that seem to focus on my wife's climbing vine that also uses the fence. They fly around the hops but don't seem to be infesting the leaves or flowers at this point. I may mix up some Dr. Bronner's spray and spray tonight after the sun is low.

Anyway, any help you can provide would be very much appreciated! I plan to use these in a Black IPA in honor of the Beaver Creek Fire that has torched some of our area up here near sun valley.
 
Also, I have no drying equipment. I was going to leave the few I got so far in the bucket near a window in the sun. It has been low 80's here, and humidity in the low 20 percent or lower, so some drying will happen naturally, but again, any advice is welcome.

Thanks!

Steve, from Hailey, Idaho.
 
First thing I'd to is go get a LOT more beer as you'll be picking for quite a while, nice job!

If you have a situation where you can pick your hops from top to bottom, you'll easily recognize the difference between the ripe ones at the top and the 'less ripe' ones near the bottom. The feel you get when you pick from top to bottom is a really cool indicator as you make your way from the papery/leathery feeling ones on top and gradually make your way down to the more soft/supple ones down low on the vine.

It looks like this isn't your case but you'll most likely get the feel once you're at it for a while. Take some time to break a few apart and see how easily the bracts (petals) come away from the strig. The under--ripe ones will usually tear the strig a bit and will generally have less aroma than the fully ripe ones which will almost shatter when you rip them apart. Each variety is slightly different in the way they behave at harvest but that's generally a good way to tell.

ps: The whole 'browning edge' thing is a little more complicated than it seems as there's lots of things that may cause browning other than them being over ripe. Rub-n-sniff~

For drying most folks use some sort of screen to allow air contact from all angles. Have fun!!
 
B-Hoppy said:
First thing I'd to is go get a LOT more beer as you'll be picking for quite a while, nice job!

If you have a situation where you can pick your hops from top to bottom, you'll easily recognize the difference between the ripe ones at the top and the 'less ripe' ones near the bottom. The feel you get when you pick from top to bottom is a really cool indicator as you make your way from the papery/leathery feeling ones on top and gradually make your way down to the more soft/supple ones down low on the vine.

It looks like this isn't your case but you'll most likely get the feel once you're at it for a while. Take some time to break a few apart and see how easily the bracts (petals) come away from the strig. The under--ripe ones will usually tear the strig a bit and will generally have less aroma than the fully ripe ones which will almost shatter when you rip them apart. Each variety is slightly different in the way they behave at harvest but that's generally a good way to tell.

ps: The whole 'browning edge' thing is a little more complicated than it seems as there's lots of things that may cause browning other than them being over ripe. Rub-n-sniff~

For drying most folks use some sort of screen to allow air contact from all angles. Have fun!!
Click to expand...

Ok, Thanks! This is on a standard height fence so I can kind of "top to bottom" it, and can certainly tell which ones have had more sun. I am just going for the more papery feeling and sounding ones for now, and if they pull more easily off the vine, and plan to pick over the next several days, unless you think I could just pick most of them now, based on the pics.

What do I look for when I am rubbing and sniffing? Right now, the riper ones I am picking feel papery when I rub, and have that good hoppy smell. Not noticing a lot of grassy smell. the glands are in there and are a nice yellow, but not super school bus gold yet, which is one reason I am being conservative and waiting just a bit on some. Anything else to be looking for?
 
Yeah thanks. It is a pretty dry climate here, so I think this fan on a screen method out of the sun in the garage will work pretty well. I don't think I am going to get too complicated with trying to measure things about drying, but just go for feel. But especially because I had sprayed water on them to keep bugs away just before I took the first pics and harvested the ones in the bucket, I felt it was a bad idea to leave them in there for any length of time.
 
I just harvested 2 of my 6 plants. Zeus on the left, centennial on the right. Drying on a screen. Will vacuum seal in a day or two and get cracking on the others

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sunvalleylaw said:
What do I look for when I am rubbing and sniffing? Right now, the riper ones I am picking feel papery when I rub, and have that good hoppy smell. Not noticing a lot of grassy smell. the glands are in there and are a nice yellow, but not super school bus gold yet, which is one reason I am being conservative and waiting just a bit on some. Anything else to be looking for?
Click to expand...

Not all lupulin turns school bus yellow. Each variety is a little bit different with some being darker than others. I can't find the reference for color right now but it is varietal 'thing'. Best thing to do is to grab a few cones (remember what they feel like) then rub and mash them up between the palms of your hands and then smell (see pic). The more mature they are the more they'll just smell like what you want with very little grass aroma and your palms will feel really greasy/buttery. You can read a lot about when to pick but it comes down to physically doing it for a few years, and on different varieties. Also, after you pick, make sure to leave a few on the vine. Wait a week or two and then give them the rub~n~sniff and see what happens. Wait a few more weeks and then do the same. Just remember what you smelled over the course of that time frame and you'll be on your way to a career in hop harvesting!

Chinook hand 3.jpg


Chinook hand1.jpg
 
B-Hoppy said:
[...]Also, after you pick, make sure to leave a few on the vine. Wait a week or two and then give them the rub~n~sniff and see what happens. Wait a few more weeks and then do the same. Just remember what you smelled over the course of that time frame and you'll be on your way to a career in hop harvesting!
Click to expand...

This is incredibly good advice...

Cheers!
 
a couple days on a window screen with the fan is drying the first bunch out nicely. Going to rub-and-sniff and pick some more over the next few days/weeks. Thanks!
 
B-Hoppy said:
Not all lupulin turns school bus yellow. Each variety is a little bit different with some being darker than others. I can't find the reference for color right now but it is varietal 'thing'. Best thing to do is to grab a few cones (remember what they feel like) then rub and mash them up between the palms of your hands and then smell (see pic). The more mature they are the more they'll just smell like what you want with very little grass aroma and your palms will feel really greasy/buttery. You can read a lot about when to pick but it comes down to physically doing it for a few years, and on different varieties. Also, after you pick, make sure to leave a few on the vine. Wait a week or two and then give them the rub~n~sniff and see what happens. Wait a few more weeks and then do the same. Just remember what you smelled over the course of that time frame and you'll be on your way to a career in hop harvesting!
Click to expand...

This is a good reference i would use, their site is amazing for all things hops related.

http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties
 
Weigh the hops wet. Then while drying you can weigh them again and see how much moisture was removed. Should be about 1/4 the weight when dry I think.
 
B-Hoppy said:
That wasn't the one I was thinking of but thanks, great content! I just checked out the Hopunion site which used to include lupulin color but doesn't any more. Still pretty full of info though: http://www.hopunion.com/hop-varieties/
Click to expand...

Yea similar info, i like the BeerLegends presentation a lot more though.

Its nice to see everything in chart form to get an idea of where it falls in the scale compared to other varieties
 
Ok, I will take some close up pics of some of the hops and leaves and post later. A few more were ready to pick today, but there are a LOT that look to me like they could go a while longer. Meanwhile, the little white flies I mentioned in the first post are becoming a little more annoying. I sprayed Dr. Bronner's tonight, after just using the hose the other day. Will keep doing it to hold them at bay.

A search of the site revealed that soapy water spray seems to be the trick for both white flies and aphids so regardless of what they are, I will use the method.
 
Whatever you spray on them, try to find out how long you have to wait after you spray until you can harvest. Remember, whatever it is that you spray may end up in your beer. Most chemicals labeled for use on food products will have this interval stated on the label and it's there for a reason. Even though you're just spraying soapy water, it's still essentially a pesticide and could possibly carry over into your beer. It probably won't kill you but may screw up a batch of beer. No matter what you do it's a really good idea to read and understand the label~
 
I used Dr. Bronner's, 1 tbsp per 1 liter.

INGREDIENTS:
Water, Organic Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Organic Olive Oil, Mentha Arvensis, Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil, Citric Acid, Tocopherol (Vit. E).

Sprayed tonight, then the sprinklers rinsed them later on. I see other's use Dr. Bronner's on this forum, so hopefully it will be ok. Basically food based oils are all that is in it plus the potassium hydroxide which is the soap. So, organic soapy water.
 
Some closer pics for any help identifying the variety, and the condition as of this morning:

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This one is probably not the ripest on the vine, but here is an inside shot.
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Those look pretty much ready for harvest i'd say...the tips are browning.
Eventually the entire leaf will brown so you want to get them down before that happens.
 
We live at altitude as well. (about 5500 feet in Hailey) and I can feel our growing season turning. I may get some additional maturity out of some, but it is getting down to it before we start getting the first freezes in a few weeks perhaps.
 
Ok, I am going to pick and dry a bunch for my Black IPA, and pick the rest and do a Wet/fresh hop IPA with these things. Not sure exactly how it will be as I don't know what these hops are, but I will just go ahead and use a lot. Maybe a pound buttering/boiling, a pound in the last 5 min. and a pound dry. Will use a basic APA extract recipe withe some grains. Any other thoughts? I figure I will shoot to have the flavor and aroma of these hops, whatever they are, as the prominent feature. basicially, a homegrown, homebrewed wet hopped
IPA.
 
Second harvest. I figure this is at most a third of the remaining hops available. Lots more to pick. I may have to stack some screens.

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