What is a Good Variety to Grow in New Orleans?

[GrowleyMonster]

So I am looking to buy some hops rhizomes and one site has the following:
Chinook
Galena
COlumbus
Nugget
Cascade
Magnum
Crystal
Comet
Sterling
Mt. Hood
Centennial
Goldings

Location is New Orleans. We get a fair amount of rain, and this will be planted by the house where it can easily be watered if necessary. We get more sunshine than the Pacific NW. It freezes here typically a couple times a year but seldom goes much below freezing. This will be a small planting, maybe a half dozen vines, and setting up raised beds with more effective drainage would be no big problem if needed. I just want to grow enough hops that I seldom if ever need to buy hops. I have plenty of freezer space. I have only used Cascade, which I am using now, until the pound I just bought is done, and also Willamette. My beers are generally ales, not very hoppy and not very dark, usually shooting for IBU about 20 or 25 and ABV of around 5%.

Out of the listed choices, which would likely be best? Worst? Thanks for any input.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Location is New Orleans. We get a fair amount of rain, and this will be planted by the house where it can easily be watered if necessary. We get more sunshine than the Pacific NW. It freezes here typically a couple times a year but seldom goes much below freezing...

Out of the listed choices, which would likely be best? Worst? Thanks for any input.

Hops are temperate plants, they generally benefit from a bit of frost. But one of your biggest problems will be daylength - commercially 35°N/S is viewed as the limit, but people here have managed to get cones a bit closer to the equator than that. But you're below 30°N, which is pushing it.

And that's before you get to the heat and humidity, neither of which are good either for the plants or for avoiding fungal diseases. So I think you can immediately write off European varieties like Goldings and those with significant European parentage - Crystal/Mt Hood/Sterling.

Others here will have more relevant experience, of the remainder the likes of Chinook are fairly tough, but I suspect that in such extreme conditions you will ideally want something with neomexicanus parentage like Medusa or Neo1.

 

[odie]

bummer...I too would like to try growing hops in south Texas

 

[Denny]

bummer...I too would like to try growing hops in south Texas

It's not that you can't. It's that they won't do very well and you may well be disappointed at the results compared to the amount of effort you put in.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Bumping with a purpose. Anybody have any experience with neomexicana, or neo1, or any other derived breeds?

Apparently there is a hops farm making a go of it in Florida. They like Cascade, and a few others.



https://floridabeerblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/07/interview-richard-smith-florida-hops/