2011 Hop Garden Picture Thread

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Anticipating Irene, today I went ahead and harvested most of my first year Centennial, Chinook and Cascades. I picked all of the most ripe cones and left the rest, hopefully for a post-apocalypse harvest.

Took some "Before" pics, fwiw...
Centennial on the right, Chinook on the left, with a Trumpet Vine in between.
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The Cascades, hiding behind a Butterfly Bush and hemmed in by a Trumpet Vine.
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Cascades close up.
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Chinooks and Centennials looked similar (hit the 10 pic/post limit so I had to cut those)....

Anyway, I needed to come up with a way to dry the cones, so I built three stackable frames out of 1x3 pine, with routed slots to hold some borrowed window screens.
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With the screens ready to go I went out and picked like there was no tomorrow (because there might just not be one for the hops!) I harvested about 3/4 of the Cascades, 2/3 of the Chinooks, and nearly all of the Centennials.
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Not too bad for first years!

Once I had weighed the hops, I set a pair of box fans on milk crates on the shop floor, positioned a couple of saw horses over them, then started assembling the drying screens. Bottom layer was the Centennials...
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...followed by the Chinooks...
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...and topped with the Cascades.
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I thumb-tacked some screening over the top of the stack to keep the Cascades from floating away.
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Finally, I surrounded the stack with some plywood panels to help contain the wind a bit. Got a good enough flow through the stack to float some loose Cascade petals so I think this is going to work just fine!
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As it turned out, it was probably a good thing that Irene got me moving, because there were a heck of a lot of ripe cones to pick that I might have let go too long otherwise.

The whole house smells amazing right now...

Cheers!
 
yeah, I'm planing some picking early tomorrow. I'm not sure if everything is ready, but it's better to pick it too soon that for it to end up two counties over.
 
That is a phenomenal harvest for first years...just one plant for each - Cascade, Centennial and Chinooks??

Puts my first year Centennial harvest to shame...congrats!! And good luck with the storm...
 
Mine are starting come around.

I found them last year growing along an old fence role while dove hunting. They were way to dry then, but when I cracked them open there was lots of lupulin glands and they smell really good.

I followed a few strong bines to their origin, then marked them for the spring. I built a simple trellis; 8' green ground post, 18' bamboo pole, stainless hose clamps to attach to post, and some twine. The point where the bines merge in the picture is about 9 ft.

I am going to send some in the get tested, so we know kinda what they are.

***disclaimer***
Before you guys jump on me for "wild " hops....I am in an area that grew a lot of commercial hops 100 years ago, on an old fence row that has been here longer than the oldest farmer (96) around here can remember.....not out in some remote forest.

They are definitely brewing hops.





*edit.....not sure why the pictures are sideways. This was sent from DROIDX using the HBT app.

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That is a phenomenal harvest for first years...just one plant for each - Cascade, Centennial and Chinooks??

Puts my first year Centennial harvest to shame...congrats!! And good luck with the storm...

Nah - that would have been even more phenomenal ;) I actually planted four tiny rhizomes of each variety back in April. And when I say "tiny", I mean no bigger around than a #2 pencil and about the same length, totally white, with barely any nodes.

I actually was a bit disappointed with how they arrived (from Midwest, fwiw) and frankly didn't have a lot of hope for them, but they all sprouted one good bine each.

When I did the picking I noticed the distribution of cones was far from uniform. One of the Cascade bines only had like four cones, another had only a few dozen; one of the Centennials had zero and another had a couple of dozen; and one of the Chinooks had just a handful, while another had a couple of dozen.

So, basically, nearly all of the cones for each hop type came from just two bines. Thus I can totally understand how some folks go through their first season with little to nothing to show for the effort.

Hoping next year the laggards get their **** together ;)

Checked the dryer this afternoon and gave the cones a stir. They're already much lighter than when I loaded the screens, so tomorrow I'll weight them out and if I've hit the 20% point I'll be vac-bagging and putting them in the freezer 'til I get a chance to use 'em...

Cheers!
 
Here are some new pics of my first year balcony grown container hops. I have a ton (not literally:p)of cones now. The first pic is of the Willamette. I think they are ready or really close...they smell awesome now. The second pic is of the tangled mass of all 5 plants. I didn't concern myself with keeping them separate as I didn't think I'd get anything first year. They will have to be sorted by ripeness and smell when i pick them. The last pic is of the multitude of cascade cones. They are still tiny and already are starting to smell nice

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Two days of drying got the weight of the cones down between 20-25% of wet, so I went ahead and bagged 'em up. Ended up with 6 ounces of Cascade, 5 ounces of Chinook, and 4 ounces of Centennial.
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Don't have a Foodsaver, but just for grins I rigged up a thin nozzle to my shop vac and sucked nearly all the air out of the freezer bags. Scrunched the bags up pretty well.
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Stuffed 'em all in one of my brewery fridge freezer compartments for future use. I figure I can get a couple of 5 gallon batches out of these. If there are any cones left on the bines after Irene gets done thrashing us I'll add them later...

Cheers!
 
First year fuggles and cascade grown in a container in Calgary. Hope the cold holds off long enough for the harvest!

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Fuggles cones
 

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This year I want to use more hops for wet hopping. So rather then harvest it all in one day, I will be picking them a few ounces at a time and using them fresh off the vine on a brew day for aroma hopping and dry hopping. Wet hopped beers are totally fantastic, it is like a different demention of hops, I highly recommend it. My plan for tomorrow is to use some of them for wet hopping a Rye IPA straight from the vine into a keg :)
 
My first year Cascades. A very nice and unexpected collection of cones. The Goldings didn't produce cones and the Nugget never got out of the ground.

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Great video Hypno, but I was expecting music more on the lines of,
"Bow Chicka Bow Wow."
I just pick my last 1/2 ounce or so of Cascades this years. Had a total of about 29 ounces on my two 4 year old plants.
Ed
 
Great video Hypno, but I was expecting music more on the lines of,
"Bow Chicka Bow Wow."
I just pick my last 1/2 ounce or so of Cascades this years. Had a total of about 29 ounces on my two 4 year old plants.
Ed

I really, really considered this. We were joking about it while filling the buckets.


Thanks for the compliments guys :)
 
Brewed a wet IPA last week.

I brewed my first wet hop brew 10 days ago. The 5 minute addition did not seem to give much aroma. I wonder if I should have ripped those hops in half to get more out of them.
 
I like the hop bed JF. Makes my eyes red just lookin at it. Def some healthy bines there,MJ. Looks like quite a load!:cross:
 
First year harvest. I am not sure If I did it too soon . From what I read the cones were papery and sprung back when squeezed. Also they were full of lupulin. I plan on putting the whole batch into a American IPA.

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The last of the first year hops have been picked and I got a decent harvest. I had five plants grown on a south facing balcony. Here's how they ended up doing:

Nugget in 100L of potting soil: 12oz wet
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Willamette in 100L of potting soil: .55oz when dried.
Cascade in 100L of potting soil: 20oz wet
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Centennial in 50L of used potting soil: approximately 30 weak little cones that I didn't bother picking
Mt. Hood in 40L of used potting soil: 4 weak little cones

I used the willamettes and 6oz of wet nuggets in the brown ale recipe from How to Brew. I tried a gravity sample tonight (one week in primary) and it is spicy! I wanted to brew something other than an IPA...The malt is awesome but the hopping is a little weird...I can't tell if it will be drinkable yet :)

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I put the wet cascades in the freezer for next weekend when I'll brew an IPA. I might throw in some of the left over nuggets at bittering.

So yay for homegrown hops! If you have even a tiny southfacing outdoor space, get a big rubbermaid container, some fresh soil and go for it. Nobody I talked to thought I was going to grow anything and I got enough for 2 batches my first year.
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I have wood siding on my house, but was considering running the bines up to the overhang of my roof, do you think the moisture from the bines would rot out the wood siding? Should I just invest in building a structure over my beds for them to climb up?
 
One of my Hops trellis/ girlfriends veggie garden.. planter boxes... Cascade in this one just starting to poke thru the mounds... I will be building 3 more for the Golding, Tettnanger and Centennial amongst other things that the girlfriend wants to grow..

First post..

Cheers!!

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Just picked my hops, drying 2 lbs. on my new contraption. I think I picked them late, they are pretty dried out on the bines.

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you picked them yesterday, 2 years ago?

(this is the 2011 thread you revived, see post immediately prior)
 
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