Hop Crops For the Year -- Picking Time?

[Omnidons-Brewing]

Here's how my hop plants are looking last night, ready to be picked?


It's 3 Cascade vines and 1 Chinook vine.

 

[cswis86]

They look great! Do they feel dry and papery? How do they smell? From the pictures they still look pretty green. I would wait until you start to see the hop flowers start to brown on the tips.

 

[corkybstewart]

Wow. But you can only judge readiness by touch.

 

[Kent88]

There is some method for determining readiness for picking by determining moisture content, I think. Something about measuring moisture content by weighing wet cones, putting them in the dehydrator, and weighing them again, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Ruint]

here is a link that you might be able to use....

had a bad link...edited out.... this one should do...

http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/drying_hops_on_a_small_scale

 

[day_trippr]

Location might be helpful, but having grown Chinook and Cascade (and Centennial and Fuggles) for now 6 years I'd say those are a couple of weeks from harvest.

I'd wait until there is a bit of browning, then split open a cone length-wise and if the lupulin is "school bus yellow" they'll be pretty much good to go...

Cheers!

 

[B-Hoppy]

Harvest time is generally determined by dry matter content of the cones as they begin to lose moisture as they get closer to harvest time. The folks out west who've been harvesting for a few generations can tell you by feel but industry standard is to let the dry matter come up to a little ways over 20%. The plants push really hard during that last 7-10 days before harvest to fill those lupulin glands up with oil so if you harvest too early, your hops probably won't have the same impact as if you were to have let them hang for another few days. Sure, there will be enough oil there before they're actually ripe to give you a really nice aroma when you rub them, but you can short yourself if you jump the gun, been there. Here's one way to calculate the dry matter %: http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/harvest_time_approaching_for_hop_growers

And believe it or not, browning of the hops really isn't a good indicator of ripeness. It's generally caused by something like wind burn or there are a few diseases that can cause the cones to brown one way or another. Most folks use pellets and never get a chance to see whole cones unless they grow them themselves. I've used whole cones since the late 80's and called my friend at Freshops up the first time I got a lot of hops with a bunch of brown. Dave explained that it could be a number of things that can cause off color. It's usually not a big deal unless it's sooty mold, I won't use those, haha!