No smell, no fragrance

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HSM

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2nd year Cascades, I have a ton of cones all nice and big. None of them have any visible lupines and smell just like nothing. I tore a cone apart and deep in the center is a deposit of lupines. Are they just not ready yet? It's been dry and I water often.
 
They're not ready. Check out my blog on hops. It shows a picture of exactly how your hops should look when they're ready. I've been growing for 4 years now, and what some people call "a heavy hop smell" has been a faint odor for me. Some people have a better sense of smell I suppose.

Anyways... it's not all about the smell for me, but the feel. If they're light and papery, they're ready. A good trick is if you can drop them on a hard floor and they break apart, they're probably ready. That's not always true though. When you start seeing some of them turning brown, a majority of them are probably ready for harvest.
 
2nd year Cascades, I have a ton of cones all nice and big. None of them have any visible lupines and smell just like nothing. I tore a cone apart and deep in the center is a deposit of lupines. Are they just not ready yet? It's been dry and I water often.

Sounds like you are a week or two from being ready. Once you start seeing luplin on the outside bracts and you can smell them and they get just a touch of brown on the bracts they should be ready to pick.

Cheers
 
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