Northern_Brewer
British - apparently some US company stole my name
Since we're coming (in the Northern hemisphere at least) to the culmination of the hop-growing year, I was thinking it was time to get our cameras out to help those HBTers who have hops they can't identify. Particularly if you have access to traditional landraces which are the ones that people are most likely to find growing in some abandoned farmstead etc.
IME there aren't many pictures of hops of the internet that are geared to identification. The most important feature is the colour/patterns of the mature bines and sometimes the petioles (leaf stalks) - Fuggles has green bines with red petioles - but they're hard to photograph even if that's what you're trying to photo, which the average random internet photographer is not.
Cones and leaves are notoriously variable in shape but if you can find "average" ones to photo then that can help - Bramling Cross tends to have short round cones whereas Fuggles tends to be longer for instance. There can be other typical features like hooked bracts. Also useful is the general "shape" of the bine - how long are the sidearms, are the cones in "clusters" or not? - but they can often be best described in words rather than photos.
We're still a month away from the main harvest here in the UK, but I know some people are almost there already. Even if you're not a photographer, it's a good time to scout out wild bones in your area - what can be better than brewing with free hops?!
IME there aren't many pictures of hops of the internet that are geared to identification. The most important feature is the colour/patterns of the mature bines and sometimes the petioles (leaf stalks) - Fuggles has green bines with red petioles - but they're hard to photograph even if that's what you're trying to photo, which the average random internet photographer is not.
Cones and leaves are notoriously variable in shape but if you can find "average" ones to photo then that can help - Bramling Cross tends to have short round cones whereas Fuggles tends to be longer for instance. There can be other typical features like hooked bracts. Also useful is the general "shape" of the bine - how long are the sidearms, are the cones in "clusters" or not? - but they can often be best described in words rather than photos.
We're still a month away from the main harvest here in the UK, but I know some people are almost there already. Even if you're not a photographer, it's a good time to scout out wild bones in your area - what can be better than brewing with free hops?!
