Well this year I have quite a few hop vines going, so I thought I should experiment with one vine before committing to taking them all down.
So i picked one vine and put them in a mesh colander inside the oven and turned it to warm with the door open and a fan blowing on them, I left them in there for 6 hours, then overnight I put the mesh colander on top of the fan and let the air blow over them for the whole night, by the time the morning came the hops were very dry and I bagged them up. I filled a one quart freezer bag to the top and had to smash the last few hops in to get it to close. I then took the little pump and sucked the air out of the freezer bags and wound up with some hops in my freezer.
After drying some of the hops still had a grassy smell, but much less pronounced than when I had origionally picked them. I am going to brew with some fresh off the vine hops next weekend... and store the rest, should be a good time.
So i picked one vine and put them in a mesh colander inside the oven and turned it to warm with the door open and a fan blowing on them, I left them in there for 6 hours, then overnight I put the mesh colander on top of the fan and let the air blow over them for the whole night, by the time the morning came the hops were very dry and I bagged them up. I filled a one quart freezer bag to the top and had to smash the last few hops in to get it to close. I then took the little pump and sucked the air out of the freezer bags and wound up with some hops in my freezer.
After drying some of the hops still had a grassy smell, but much less pronounced than when I had origionally picked them. I am going to brew with some fresh off the vine hops next weekend... and store the rest, should be a good time.