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Second Year Hops are Sprouting

Compared to this time last year, the hops are huge! They are now second generation and should yield a lot more cones this fall. These hops have been in the ground for 12 months. They sprouted early because of the warmer winter in Oregon. I noticed the sprouts forming last week. Since hops are a perennial, they continue to regenerate every year with a new vine shoot starting in the spring. These are of course the female plant, designed for collecting the cones for use in brewing.

In a few weeks I will setup the lines the vines will grow on, hanging down from the eve of the house. I will also prune back the crowns to just the two strongest shoots. That way the plant puts all its growing energy into the remaining vines, instead of spread out across a dozen shoots. This practice results in a higher yield of hops cones.

Next year, I will need to thin out the root system around the plants so that they do not take over my entire property.

The nugget variety is a deep purple color and already has a shoot 1 foot long (not pictured).

For a size comparison, take a look at last year’s sprouts:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/04/19/baby-hops-sprout-pictures/

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Hops Alpha Acid Table 2009

Updated for the 2009 harvest.  New varieties added – thanks to everyone who wrote in!

Alpha Acids from hops contribute to the bitterness in beer. During the boil alpha acids are isomerized and increase international bittering units (IBUs). This site has an IBU calculator.

Hops also contain beta acids, which contribute to aroma only. The more alpha acids the more bittering potential per ounce. For example, one ounce of Northern Brewer (8.5) is roughly equivalent of two ounces of Domestic Hallertau (3.9) in terms of bittering potential.

This chart is a general guideline only. The actual AA varies from year to year depending on the weather, harvest conditions, and storage.

If you do not see your hops listed here please leave a comment or send us feedback and we will find out for you!

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Identifying Hops Techniques

It’s the season to harvest, and if you’ve been diligent and foresighted, you have a nice crop of well-labeled hop plants, and have no need for this article.

However, if the labels you planted next to the vines have faded & run since you planted them, or if your hop harvest didn’t come from a garden, but from a fortunate find of a hop plant at the state park or growing over the fence from a neighbor, identifying what you’ve got is a bit more important to you.

Visually, one species of hop cone looks much like another, so just looking won’t help. Aroma can be a huge indicator of the hop type, so you should start with that. If your hops are dried (which they should be, after harvest!), they won’t have a lot of aroma initially. Take the cone between your palms of your hands, rub your hands together, and then cup them near your nose and inhale. The hop aroma should be strong enough to identify any significant aromatic markers, such as the citrus aroma of Cascade or Centennial hop.

Some folks claim that the only way to really identify a hop is to brew with it. While that might work, there’s an easier way to identify the flavors & bitterness of a hop without risking a batch of beer. Once you’ve crushed the hop between your hands and smelled the aroma, throw your teakettle on the stove & heat some water to boiling. Making hop tea is the next-best thing to brewing with it, so toss your crushed cone in a cup and add boiling water. Let it steep for about five minutes to fifteen minutes, and then smell the aroma again. It should be fainter, but still the same notes as you smelled before. Strain the hops out of your tea, and then take a sip of the tea, checking for both flavor and bitterness. Because it’s a small amount of hop, steeped for a short amount of time, bitterness will be minimal (relative to your beer), but a highly bitter hop will be noticeable.

One word of caution: do not chew on the hop directly. It’s tempting and a fun prank to play on novice brewers, but the intensity of the bitterness will drown out other flavors in the hop, making identification harder, not easier. You get better flavors and a better balance from making the ‘tea’, and your palate isn’t smothered afterward.

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Fall Hop Harvest Guidelines

Now that you have spent the entire growing season diligently caring for your vines, it is time to harvest what can turn out to be copious amounts of hops on healthy, mature plants. The following will cover some guidelines for you to follow in order to assure that you are harvesting your hops at their peak of potency and freshness. A little study in this area will allow you to accurately time your harvest so that you can maximize your return on your annual investment in water and time.

Take note, the following guidelines are on a cone by cone basis, rarely, if ever, will all of your cones be ready for harvest simply because some of them are presenting the signs that they are ready to harvest. Harvests can many times take days, or weeks to complete in separate stages for the home brewer. Hops farmers will often harvest everything at once, but at home you can take more care.

1. Hop cones appear less “tight”, the leaves of the cone are visibly “opening” (Fig 1)

2. The bases of the hop leaves are showing ample amounts of bright yellow lupulin (Fig 2)

3. When squeezed, the cones emit the fragrant scent that you would come to expect from fresh hops (pungent, fragrant)

4. When the cone is squeezed between your fingers and released, it feels papery, resilient, not green and hard

5. The small bract leaves at the base of the hop stem are beginning to dry and the tips are browning (Fig 3)

(Fig 1)

(Fig 2)

(Fig 3)

Typically when you observe a hop cone presenting all of the above traits, there will be an ample number just like it, enough to justify harvesting all of those that have peaked. Those cones that do not exhibit the signs listed above are best to be left alone until they do. It can take days or even weeks for them to mature.

Once you have harvested the ripe cones, it is time to prepare them for preservation. Hops have several enemies when it comes to maintaining their characteristics.

1. Temperature

2. Oxygen

3. Time

Hops must be stored cool, or better yet frozen. The oils that exist in the lupulin glands are volatile and do not store well at room temperature. These oils are also easily oxidized, which means that long term storage planning must include some sort of vacuum packaging. Lastly, even if you have frozen and vacuum packaged your hops, time is one enemy that you cannot avoid, that is, unless you actively brew and use your hops!

To prepare your hops for storage as discussed above, they are typically dried. You can freeze them wet, or use them wet in a specialty beer if you like! There is a school of thought, however, that believes that freezing WET hops will actually serve to preserve the hops longer, though drying them is the norm. (Source Charlie Papazian, Homebrewers Companion)

To dry the hops you can use many methods, but stay away from cookie sheets and ovens if you can. Hops are fragile, their oils and thusly their characteristics are extremely susceptible to degradation from high temperatures, best to dry them slowly and naturally. Food dehydrators have been used with success, or another method that is used with great success is the box fan and window screen method.

(Fig 4)

If you have a home, you most certainly have windows, and you most certainly have some window screens to go along with them. You can use some chairs, 5 gallon buckets, really anything you can think of to support the window screen horizontally above the floor. Now, you must do the same with a cheap box fan from any retail store… supported above the floor (to allow it circulate air), but below your window screen, facing upward.

You can then spread your freshly harvested hops across the screen in a singular layer and turn the fan on low. You don’t want the hops flying all over your garage, but you do want to promote drying and air circulation. Agitate the hops periodically to ensure even drying of all of the hops. Allow this process to carry on until your leaf hops are papery and sufficiently dry to store. Once this is accomplished, vacuum seal and freeze any hops that you do not intend to use right away to preserve them.

When you are picking, make sure to keep the different varieties you grow in separate containers and drying screens as not to mix them up.

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Almost time for the hop harvest

It is almost that time of year – the hops harvest!   For us, Centennial, Mt. Hood and Hallertau are almost ready. Nugget is not yet ready.

Harvesting and storing hops:

• It is time to pick when the petals on the cones just start fading to brown.
  
• The vines can be cut down to the base and composted.  Vines can also be buried to propagate the plant for next year.
  
• The cones must be dried before packaging. Make sure not to mix up the varieties.  A low budget solution is to setup a drying rack made from an old screen and saw horses. Leave them from 2 days in a protected area like the garage. A food dehydrator works too, and much faster.
  
• When dry and ready for packaging, the cones will open up some.
  
• Then it is time to vacuum seal.  Store the sealed bags, labeled, in a freezer, where they will keep for years.

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Baby Hops Cones

The cones are starting to form on the hops plants outside. I just wanted to share a few pictures.

This one is hallertau:

This is from nugget:

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The Hops Race

All six new rhizomes sprouted this year. Some are doing better than others. Nugget is doing the best, while cascade and magum are lagging. They were both hit with excess water during a storm. The gutter overflowed right on top of them for an hour. It was painful to watch.

All told I am really happy with the result so far:

I had planned to do a trellis system. Then I noticed the plant hanger hooks already on the house. A simple length of twine and a piece of bamboo at the foot saved me several hours of work. I had planned to do cemented posts and a 12′ trellis which could be disassembled at the end of the season and saved for next year. This was much easier and it proves just how simple hops growing is. We have been watering them every other day, about a ten second dosing with the hose.

Nugget is the offical winner this season:

Followed by:

• Hallertau #2
• East Kent Goldings
• Hallertau #1
• Magnum
• Cascade

More images to come as cones develop.

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Baby Hops Sprout Pictures

After only three weeks of putting hops rhizomes in the ground they are already sprouting!  Check back on the website for regular updates. Growing hops is easy and so much fun!

Cascade Hops Sprouts 1 – After 3 Weeks

Hallertau Hops Sprouts – After 3 Weeeks (about 5 inches tall)

According to Fresh Hops we are not to prune anything off the baby hops. When they are big enough I will train the strongest shoots onto a climbing line attached to the trellis. Thankfully due to the Oregon climate, I have not had to worry about watering them as it has rained almost every day! If it gets dry I will gently wet them down with the hose, but I won’t over do it.

We put in six new hops plants this year. One Nugget, one Magnum, one cascade, one Kent Goldings, and two Hallertau. As I understand it, Hallertau (aka Hallertaur) is being pulled by hops farmers in favor of higher yield, higher alpha acid varieties in Oregon. This concerns me as Hallertau is a noble hop variety and one of the best for German lagers and Pilsners. Mt. Hood is a substitute for Hallertau, but its not the same. The lagers I have made with Mt. Hood turned out great, but there are differences. Across the batches I have brewed, Mt. Hood is cleaner smelling and tasting, while the Hallertau adds a more floral scent and subtle complexity to the flavor of the beer (the kind of thing money can’t buy). I am growing Hallertau for my personal supply so I ensure myself access to the variety.

For information on how we planted these hops rhizomes see this article on planting hops.

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How to Plant Hops for Home Brewing

Planting hops is a straight forward process. This article will walk you through what to consider when planting your hops. If you have not done so already, see our article on planning out your hops yard. You will need an area that is sunny, has good drainage, high quality soil, and a place for the hops to climb. Planting is best done in early spring when the threat of frost is gone, but not after May.

To plant the rhizomes, first dig a hole about one foot deep and one foot around. It is recommended to space plants at least five feet apart, but plants of the same variety can be three feet apart. Make sure to write down where each rhizome is located if you are planting different varieties.

Fill the hole with compost 2/3 of the way, then top it off with high quality potting soil. Any kind of compost, commercial fertilizer or manure will do. Put the rhizome about two inches under the soil in a little mound, horizontal, or vertically with the buds pointing up.

Cover the rhizome and give it a dose of water. Make sure to water it regularly for the whole season, but don’t soak it.

In the first season do not expect much growth. In a few months the first vines will emerge.

Only in the following summer will the vines really take off and start to yield a high number of cones that can be dried and used in the kettle!

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Planning Your Hops Yard for Home Brewing

Growing hops at home is a great way to expand the brewing hobby, practice a green thumb, and have fun in general. It is cheap to get started, and also saves money on each batch, though it does take up time like everything else in brewing.

Hops is a perennial and produces new vines annually starting in the spring from a crown that can live upwards of ten years. The scientific name of the hops plant is Humulus lupulus. The female hops plant is the one that produces the desirable cones used in brewing beer. The male plant is not used for brewing. The male plant can improve the yield in females nearby but its presence causes seeds to form in the cones which are not good for brewing.

When selecting what kinds of hops to grow, it is important to balance between bittering and aromatic variates so you have flexibility in brewing. Each plant will yield anywhere from one half to two pounds of dried cones when mature. I have two bittering (Nugget and Magnum), and four aromatic (Cascade, Kent Goldings, and two Hallertauer). This gives me plenty of surplus to share with friends or experiment with.

Location considerations for your hop yard:

• Sunlight exposure: Hops need lots of sunlight to grow properly. In the northern hemisphere a southern exposure is the best. At least eight hours of sunlight per day is recommended.

• Soil quality and drainage: The soil should be nutrient rich, with pH in the range of 6.5-8.0. Hops should to be kept away from damp areas to discourage diseases.

• Trellis setup: Hops need to climb, a minimum of 12 feet. Commercial hops yards have 18′ trellis systems. Hops will grow even higher than that, upwards of 25 feet. A trellis system can be as simple as two poles with a wire strung between them. It needs to be strong enough to support the weight of the vines and withstand windy conditions. The one I have is bolted together so I can tear it down in the fall when the harvest is over.

• Potting: You can start rhizomes off in planters, and this is recommended in cold areas. However, within the first few months they should be transplanted into the ground since the root systems like to spread out.

For practical purposes at home, the side of the house that faces the sun during the day is best. It makes a convenient location because of the warmth and the ease of rigging up something the vines can climb up. Way out in the back yard, or below a balcony are other great choices.

Late winter or early spring is the time of the year to order hops rhizomes. A rhizome is a chunk of root from an active plant. There are many affordable sources online but they sell out fast! When the rhizomes arrive, put them in the fridge (they should already be in a moist bag), and plant them on the first nice day that comes along. It is recommended to space plants at least five feet apart, but plants of the same variety can be three feet apart. Make a diagram of where each variety is located and keep it safe as you will refer to it again and again.

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