85 year old hop plant...

hello everyone! a family member of mine has a hop plant that has been growing on their farm since it was planted in 1926. i've been home brewing for about five years and just learned of this plant recently. we would like to build a trellis or some sort of structure to help it grow bigger and produce more hops. would like to get some advice from people who know what they are doing... thanks!

Pics or GTFO!

Before building my very basic and free trellis, I looked up "hop trellis" on google image and got some great ideas (as did I from this site and youtube). You want to give the bines something to climb and cut back some shoots in the spring (though for an 85 y.o. plant, doing so may not even be necessary). Feed it regularly and it will be bountiful.

Thehopguy said:

Pics or GTFO!

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+1. Pic or GTFO.

How do they know when it was planted. A 20-yr-old that planted it would be 105 yrs old right now.

I bet you would need an excavator to get the root bulb out! haha

Where is it growing? If it's on the side of a barn, just run twine up the entire side of the bar and let it go (up). Should be incredible.

I would love for you to find out what variety this hop is (or what modern variety it most closely resembles).

With all of Deschutes' Larry Sidor's talk about how modern Cascade plants are not "true Cascade" just compared to thirty years ago... I wonder if this hop crown might yield hop flavors that have gone untasted for decades.

There's lots of great advice on this forum about hop growing, I'd suggest building something where you can cut the lines down at harvest, just like the pros do.

Standing by for photographs...

bigbeergeek said:

Standing by for photographs...

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Agreed. I'm curious as to where this is on your property and what it looks like

i'll try to get some pics up here soon. its on my 2nd cousin's father's land, and the hop plant was planted by his grandfather (this is how we know what year it was planted) for the past five or six years, he's entered some of the hops into the local fair and they've taken first place every year. i'm excited to start using these hops

Wow, keep us posted!

85 years old? That thing must be a monster! I wanna know what my hops will look like when my great, great, great....umm....great grandkids see 'em

Cheers!

bkelley0804 said:

i'll try to get some pics up here soon. its on my 2nd cousin's father's land, and the hop plant was planted by his grandfather (this is how we know what year it was planted) for the past five or six years, he's entered some of the hops into the local fair and they've taken first place every year. i'm excited to start using these hops

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where can i get tickets to check out this hop fair of yours? sounds awesome.

ssf said:

where can i get tickets to check out this hop fair of yours? sounds awesome.

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its not a "hop fair" sorry for the confusion... its the york fair. people can enter plants and animals where they can be judged. here's a link the their homepage http://www.yorkfair.org/

lets see this picture

Mmk subbed. Get some hop porn attachment action going plz

Pictures pls...

Pics or it didn't happen?

my cousin is going to take pics when she gets a chance. she is rather busy this time of year and will get them to me as soon as she gets a chance. in fact, i haven't even seen this plant yet either! perhaps i should have waited to post this thread until after i got to see the pics? i apologize to keep everyone in suspense but i'm in the same boat...
(have a beer on me in the meantime)
cheers!

Any update here??

Are you Dutch? German? Polish? English? Irish? What ever your hertitage is will give you a good idea of what the plant is. A lot of Fuggle was grown on homesteads in PA. Realize that Fuggle is a parent of many hops (including Cascade). Also Fuggle is cabable of surviving for years with no care; while varieties like Saazer and Hallertauer tend to die out.

Still need pics!

Ok folks, I'm the infamous cousin with the mystery hops plant that we need help with...sorry for the wait. I'm going to try to explain and post pictures, but please bear with me as I'm a nube.
The hop in question was planted in 1926, but we have no idea what kind it is. We are of German ancestry, I know that someone had asked. This poor plant has had no care for at least 25 years, probably alot more. There used to be a tree growing up through the middle (you'll understand when you see the pics) but dad took it out the other year. He thought when he pulled out the tree that he might have killed the hops by accident, but it came back. I read on the internet that you're actually supposed to cut it off at the ground level at the end of the season and it will grow anew the next spring...didn't know that!
Anyway, it has never been trellised or anything, but gets full sun and seems to be very happy where it is. It has a three lobed leaf, and the other day bkelley and I went to look at and crushed one of the hop cones...it kinda smelled like marigolds, if that makes any sense. Strong, pungent, slightly stinky...
If anyone can help identify it, and/or give us any kind of suggestions on where to go from here, we'd really really appreciate it. Dad and I are slowly trying to get the farm back in order and we'd like to see this plant get the attention it needs to be something great. Pappy was proud of it many years ago, and it always takes first place at the Fair.
Gonna try to post some pics...

Ok, that seemed to go well...so here are some more pics!

There should be one closeup of the hop cone and one that isn't as clear, but bkelley's hand in the frame gives a better indication of the size...The individual cones seem to range between 1 and 2 inches long, average being about 1.5 inches or so.

This last one is just to show the size of the plant...That's my full-size SUV (Trailblazer) beside it, and yes...it's bigger than the truck. There is a bunch of Tearthumb (or whatever it goes by in your area) growing into now, so harvesting it will be fun! The hop seems to be sending runners out farther into the yard even now!

Again, any help or input is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

:O im speechless, and that /never/ happens .

Speechless...in a good way?

Sweet Fancy Moses......

j_treegirl said:

Speechless...in a good way?

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How the heck could you not be. That thing is a hop growers dream

Thanks! We'd like to try to find out what kind it is, and how to take care of it. I know nothing about it, so if anyone knows of a good book or website or has suggestions, we'd love to hear about it. It does well left on its own apparently, so I'm always hesitant to try to do anything to it. We've only ever picked enough to submit to the fair...this year we told bkelley0804 that he could try brewing with it (once we find out how to dry the hops and stuff) if he split the product with us! That would be the first brew made with it in at least 40 years...

I think I'd mow that thing down to about 6-8inches off the ground this fall. Build a big ass trellis and train some of the rhizomes up the trellis. Fertilize well with organic matter this fall and in spring. That way you can easily harvest and they wont have to compete for space. Then dig up unused rhizomes (you'll have tons) and give them to us in some sort of lottery

Wow! It's a Hop Grove!

Good luck with the whole ID thing. I have four different strains growing and other than the outlier Fuggles they all look alike to me...

Cheers!

Need to know about the "digging up rhizomes" thing too...always wondered how you propagate them so we could plant more elsewhere...I have grapes, but there you just take a good cutting and dip it in rooting powder...I have alot to learn!!!

pickles said:

I think I'd mow that thing down to about 6-8inches off the ground this fall. Build a big ass trellis and train some of the rhizomes up the trellis. Fertilize well with organic matter this fall and in spring. That way you can easily harvest and they wont have to compete for space. Then dig up unused rhizomes (you'll have tons) and give them to us in some sort of lottery

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I wondered if it would hurt it to cut it off...that's what I read on the internet and it said to mulch heavily around it, I was just afraid of killing it. I don't even know exactly where the thing comes out of the ground! Should be interesting...

yay i'm glad she got the pics posted! we visited the plant area a couple days ago and i finally got to see it for myself. the smell is a bit piney and like she said, kind of a "marigoldish smell" as well. once they are "ready for harvest" i'm going to take some to my local homebrew shop to see if they can help identify the strain, and if not, at least tell me what beer style to brew with them. i'm guessing our big question to everyone on here (besides what you think the strain is) is what we can do to help maximize the hop production for the coming years? we've looked at different trellis pictures online. one that caught my eye is the M shape, where it goes up 5 feet, down 5 feet, then up and down again. any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.... thanks everyone!

Hops are pretty durable, as this one has shown through its decades of neglect. Commercially, they are harvested by cutting the bines off several inches above the ground and taking the entire bine in for processing to separate the cones from all the rest of the plant. The plants do fine with that. You'll be hard pressed to significantly harm the plant without chemicals or major mechanical assault on the roots.

If you are feeling insecure you could wait until after a frost kills it back, then clean it up. However, if you or a friend want the cones, it looks like your time is near. Do they feel papery? Crunch like paper when you squeeze them? If so, they're ready for harvest.

not quite papery... a few are turning a yellowish brown but for the most part, they look light green like the one in the pic. do we have to put the cones through a drying/curing process before i can brew with them?

ThreeDogsNE said:

Hops are pretty durable, as this one has shown through its decades of neglect. Commercially, they are harvested by cutting the bines off several inches above the ground and taking the entire bine in for processing to separate the cones from all the rest of the plant. The plants do fine with that. You'll be hard pressed to significantly harm the plant without chemicals or major mechanical assault on the roots.

If you are feeling insecure you could wait until after a frost kills it back, then clean it up. However, if you or a friend want the cones, it looks like your time is near. Do they feel papery? Crunch like paper when you squeeze them? If so, they're ready for harvest.

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bkelley is a faster typist than I, it appears. Hops planted in 1926 might be Goldings, or Hallertauer, or Saaz, or Cluster, or some other old variety. Most of what you LHBS (local homebrew supply) will have are much newer in origin than 1926. Can you get to these folks: http://www.uvm.edu/~pass/perry/hopvars.html for some help with identification?

When they are harvested they need to dry, and will drop markedly in weight then. There are plenty of threads here with screens or furnace filters used to create a makeshift "oast", the old term for a hops drier that I suspect "Pappy" would have been familiar with. You might see the stickies above, or the search function on the bar overhead. I just put mine on window screens in the air conditioned basement for about a week with good results. However, my bines are only second year, with modest yields, not 86 year veterans!

haha thanks! vermont is kind of far from where we are located, but perhaps we can get in touch with them and get something worked out... determining the strain would be cool seeing as how long this plant has been around.

ThreeDogsNE said:

bkelley is a faster typist than I, it appears. Hops planted in 1926 might be Goldings, or Hallertauer, or Saaz, or Cluster, or some other old variety. Most of what you LHBS (local homebrew supply) will have are much newer in origin than 1926. Can you get to these folks: http://www.uvm.edu/~pass/perry/hopvars.html for some help with identification?

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