Home grown hops

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

redrocker652002

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jun 15, 2022
Messages
2,022
Reaction score
1,865
Location
South San Francisco CA
OK, so my latest yield from my hops is as such: Columbus 1/2 ounce, Cascade at least 1oz (there are still some drying), Chinook about 1oz. My plan is to supplement my home grown into a recipe just to see how it goes. I have read that most home grown hops are not quite as strong as the pellets or the store bought cones. My thought is to add the Chinook in the start of the boil for any bittering that might be able to be done, then the Cascade and the Columbus at the end, say 10 to 15 mins left in the boil. I would add some pellets to the mix as well as I have a huge take of Cascade and CTZ in stock. It would be a very simple Pale Ale recipe with 2 row and maybe a bit of crystal for color. What say the pros who have done the home grown hop brewing? Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
Freshly harvested and not dried “wet hops” you would need 4 times as much as hop pellets, so keep that in mind as you decide your recipe. It seems true that homegrown hops are unpredictable in their AA content so the bittering addition you may definitely want to use mostly commercial hops. Using homegrown for aroma and flavor is what most of us do.
 
I had a poor yield this year. Last year, my first year growing hops, yielded 3x the amount of cones than I got this summer. I'm hoping the weather is to blame rather than dying plants. This growing season, although cloudless skies virtually every day from the time they broke ground until the day they were harvested, it was the amount of daily sunshine that may have resulted in less cones. Living so close to the ocean we're really at the mercy of how much marine layer, (or what we called fog back in NY), we get and when it dissipates. This summer we had far too many days where the sun was masked by the marine layer until close to noon. And of course there were also days when the marine layer started rolling back in around 3pm. :(
 
As @Hoppy2bmerry mentions, playing it safe means bittering with know commercial hops and going ham with homegrown in late boil.

If I do bitter with homegrown, I usually come close to my goals by estimating them at mid-low average AA for the variety and then adding 25% of weight to what the recipe calls for.

I lost track of most of my varieties planted, so its even more of a WAG in how to accurately use them.
 
Yields from backyard hop arbors in my area of Ohio are down significantly this year. This was confirmed when harvesting at our club's hop project .... 2023 = 100 lb. green Chinook, 2024 = 36 lb. green Chinook. Didn't bother to harvest some rows of other varieties. Could have been the dry, triple-digit weather stretch in June and not enough irrigation. When using wet hops I do as others have mentioned by setting an IBU base with known alpha pellets, then follow with fresh hops at 6X anticipated pellet doses.
 
My thought is usually along the lines that I grew them so I want to brew a beer with only my home grown hops. That welcomes some unknowns but that’s part of the fun.

I typically assume 2/3 of the average AA for commercial varieties. It’s close enough. I also usually brew something very light in color and malt profile so the hops are the focal point.

I’ve come to expect a lot less expressive hoppiness from my home hop beers. They’re good beers but they’re kind of nondescript generic hoppy vs commercial bought hops. Regardless, it’s fun and I keep doing it.
 
can you grow hops in zone 7 b i live in the suburbs and would love to try them next season ?
 
I grow eight verities. Nugget has become my bittering hop of choice, since it seems to be the most predictable. I brew my Homegrown Hop Pale Ale with only my homegrown hops. Each batch is different, depending on the hops I have available, but I always use Nugget as the bittering hop. I always dry my hops before freezing them for storage, So no wet hops for me.

As was mentioned by others, my yields are way down this year. Some aren't even worth harvesting, but Nugget, Chinook, and Columbus, which are usually my top producers, are very thin this year.
 
I had pretty good yields this year on established hops and fair on newer planted ones.
We did have a good summer here in the Heartland with not too many real hot days and a good amount of rain. I had a great yield on my 8-year-old Vojvodina hops and good on the Nugget and Mt Hood.
I also like the Nugget for bittering, and I have a Horizon, 2nd year growth, that is promising for bittering. Horizon is derived from Nugget and has floral and citrus descriptors.
I have in the past used homegrown Nugget and Cascade in an American Brown ale. Nugget for bittering and dry hop and Cascade later for flavor and aroma. I used the middle AA numbers [average] for the range of each hop. I think it was 11AA for Nugget and 6AA for the Cascade.
The Brown came out really good and about what I expected for bitterness. So, no fear in using thru-out the brew. YMMV.
 
can you grow hops in zone 7 b i live in the suburbs and would love to try them next season ?
There's a dedicated board for growing hops : https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forums/hops-growing.92/

Hops are temperate plants - the traditional hopgrowing areas of Europe are on a similar latitude to the US/Canada border so they don't mind a bit of frost even if the climate is less extreme than a simple comparison of latitudes would imply. But hardiness zones are less relevant than latitude as daylength is a critical factor in cone development and below 30-35 latitude the days just aren't long enough in summer for cones to develop properly. They are very thirsty plants, and don't like it too hot.

Also as perennial plants they can take up to 3 years to give a full crop, and it's a bit hit or miss whether you get anything in the first year, it just depends on how strong a rhizome you plant and how well it establishes.
 
I grow four varieties in partially submerged half wine barrels (to keep the roots from intermingling) so my harvests are usually less than people who plant directly in the ground. I pulled about 12oz of chinook, 6oz of mount hood, 3oz of sterling and what would have been about 12oz of cascade if I hadn't unloaded all of them into my wet hop IPA. It was a middle of the road harvest overall. We had kind of a weird growing season this year.

I usually brew a different wet hop brew each harvest. The rest of the hops usually make it into a few beers through the year. I only use my homegrown hops as late additions and typically in a hopstand where the unknown AA% won't be a big deal. With a small harvest, I'd do a fairly simple beer as you suggest with the home grown hops as all of your late additions. Learn the taste of your own hops so you can see what you get out of your growing and drying conditions.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top