Grow Some Hops!

Information Presentation on Growing Hops
Last month I gave a presentation to my homebrew club, QUAFF, on the basics of growing your own hops.  Several have asked for the presentation to be available for reference.   Here's the general presentation on growing your own hops at home.  Post any questions in the comments.  There were several good questions at the end of the presentation.

How do I see the speaker notes!?

I have speaker notes added to much of the presentation slides but in order to see them, you need to view full window and select Actions, View speaker notes.  Leave open the pop-up, it will change when you move through the presentation.  Enjoy!

To see the speaker notes, you need to view the presentation in a full window.

At the bottom, select Actions then Show speaker notes

Homebrewers' Rhizome Swap Next Year!
This season, I think I was able to provide rhizomes to about 20 homebrewers with the hope that our local homebrewing community also becomes a hop growing community.  If you missed it, I will have plenty again next year!  Fellow QUAFFer, homebrewer, blogger, and hop grower, Jeff Crane, suggests we declare an official rhizome swap every spring.  Should be a great way to kick off the season each year and recruit more homebrewers to be hop growers.

Dehydrating-damos Hop Oast

With the volume of hops I've been growing these days, I've long been needing a better system for dehydrating larger volumes of freshly picked hops.  According to Wikipedia, freshly picked hops can have a moisture content of 80%.  Prior to modern methods of dehydrating and making pellet hops, growers built a hop oast house to remove moisture from whole hops.  The purpose of the oast was to take the moisture content down to about 6%.  Without dehydrating, hops can quickly turn brown and eventually spoil.  You could potentially refrigerate or freeze wet hops but the moisture content can significantly shorten storage longevity.   Some like to use wet hops for brewing or dry-hopping but I  find this imparts vegetable-like flavors and aromas.

Sissinghurst Oast House in Southeast England (source below)

Oast houses had several perforated floors where hops were spread out.  At the bottom of the oast house was a kiln that applied heat through the hop laden floors.  Moisture escaped out those chimney-like rooftops.

My Former System for Dehydrating Hops
Ever since I've been growing hops, I used a common household dehydrator to do the bulk of the work.  Unfortunately, I could only dehydrate 4 square feet of hops at a time.  Considering the volume that we have typically picked off the vines at our hop farm, this simply was not enough space.

Former household dehydrator used to dry hops.

Every time we picked hops, it was always enough to fill two of these dehydrators.  We only have one!  The excess was spread out on a table at our apartment or house on paper towels.  We also turned on a fan to keep the air moving across the surface of the table.  When the hops were finished in the dehydrator (typically about 48 hours), we would transfer the table hops to the dehydrator to finish them (another 24 hours).

Dehydrating hops on a table in our old apartment.

Obviously this method of drying hops, though doable, wasn't very practical.  It limited us to how much hops we can truly pick, lengthened the time and work needed, consumed living space, and overall unchillindamos.  It did, however, make the house very aromatic.  If you want to live in an IPA, this is the way to do it!

Building a Hop Oast
The idea for the new Dehydrating-damos Hop Oast came from Food Network's show "Good Eats" hosted by Alton Brown.  The segment on the show is embedded below for you to see.  Basically, he uses common household furnace filters and a box fan to dehydrate meat and make beef jerky.

Last year, I acquired a box fan that a friend was planning on getting rid of with the intention of building a similar dehydrator for hops, the Chillindamos Dehydrating-damos Hop Oast.

The newly built oast hop tray frame.

I purchased some nicer lumber that has been sanded and has round edges (let me know if anyone wants specifics here).  Round edges make it easier when stretching the screen material.  I sized pieces to the box fan's dimensions. 

Hop oast tray frame, simple construction.

There's no need to do anything fancy.  The frame for each of the hop oast trays were built using a hand saw, nails, and wood glue.

Screen material stapled to the hop oast tray frame.

In the screen door section of the hardware store I found this heavy duty plastic-like screening that would work just right.  I used a staple gun with 1/4" staples.

Screening material stretched and stapled on the sides of the oast tray frame.

The trick to a nice taut screen is to start in the center and work your way to the corners, rotating sides each time.  This is the same technique painters use when stretching canvas on a frame.  It also works best if you have help to pull while you staple (thanks Michelle).

Dehydrating-damos Hop Oast
Building four trays and screening three of them for the latest harvest took under two hours.  After, it was a matter of dumping hops in the trays, spreading them out, stacking, and applying the box fan.

Hops dump easily into the hop oast trays.

While the heavily loaded top tray dehydrated in less than 48 hours, I plan to add two more trays (for a total of 6) to decrease the density of hops per tray, encouraging a more effective flow of air.

Hop oast trays stacked easily.

Similar to Alton Brown's dehydrator, the trays are stacked and a box fan is used to keep air flowing around the hops.  From now on, I will dehydrate my hops in the garage considering that its a dry warm environment and away from our usable living space in our house.

Box fan blows air down through the oast trays.

The trays are not directly on the garage floor, I used some wood scraps to put underneath the stack of trays.  This allows air flow to exit out the bottom.  I put the box fan on top of the trays to blow air down.  Even with one of the trays packed tight with hops, air seemed to readily flow out the bottom of the stack.  For the past two harvests, I've only kept the box fan on its lowest speed and the hops were dehydrated in less than a day and a half or about 36 hours.  (I'm thinking that if I decrease the density of the hops in each tray, I might get this process under 24 hours.)

Dehydrated hops are light and papery.

36 hours later, I opened the garage door with aromas of chinook and centennial pouring out.  The hops are light and paper-like, ready for long-term storage prep by vacuum sealing and freezing.  The trays are very easy to carry the hops to the kitchen and to shake clean.  If you need a cheap and simple system to dry a decent volume of homegrown hops, this is working out very well for me.  Let me know if you have any comments or questions!  Cheers.

More Hops = More Chillindamos

Image Source: 
Bishop, Rob. Sissinghurst Oast House. Digital image. Geograph, Sissinghurst Oast House. Geograph Britain and Ireland, 18 Feb. 2006. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. .

Hop Harvest, First Pickings

Me harvesting the Chinook Hops.  This trio of vines always has a high yield with multiple harvests.

At last, fresh homegrown hops are here!  Today we pulled a few weeds, trimmed back rogue hop vines, and harvested our first batch of Chinook and Centennial hops.  I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Michelle, posing at our hop farm in Escondido, CA.

During the summer, there's typically little to do at the hop farm besides harvesting.  There are 30 mounds yet we had a number of them that didn't do well this year.  This is mainly my fault for not visiting the farm more often early in the season.  This year, I need to tag or map mounds that never climbed or didn't even sprout so that I can give them attention next late winter.

Our bottom row of hops has finally produced.  We planted Centennial (near) and Chinook (far) last year.

Third time's a charm and our added bottom row is finally taking off.  I tried planting Cascade and Tettnanger when we first added this row a few years ago.  They failed maybe due to soil conditions, too dry, or the killer rabbits.  During the second year, we mirrored our successful top row by splitting rhizomes and planting Chinook and Centennial on the bottom row.  That year, mounds were brutally attacked by killer gnawing rabbits and while a handful were able to make the climb, yield was nearly negligible.  This year, we've increased the water flow rate, heavily mulched and fertilized, and ensured to allow plants to grow as full as possible at the base to deter those wascal wabbits from the main vines.

Many of the Chinook cones are papery and light, ready for picking.  Many others will be ready in 2 weeks.

Today was just the first harvest and you can tell when the hop cones are ready to pick.  They get drier or papery and become much lighter in weight.  You may also see some light browning on some cones beginning to develop.  This is when they are ready to pick.  In the early days, we used clippers and cut each one carefully off the vine.  Now, we just pull.  We try to eliminate the stem by pinching at the base.  After picking, my hands are sticky with a yellowish dirt color from all of the lupulin.  The smell, however, is hoptastic!

Chinook hops do very well here, lush full leaves with hop flowers growing at every opportunity.

Healthy, happy, and full, the Chinook trio of vines on our top row never fails to just go crazy!

The Chinook trio is loaded with hops.  Some are ready now yet we'll be be able to pick cones for many weeks.

As you can see from the above picture, the cones are in different stages.  I know the big hop growers choose an optimal timing for their vines and cut them down for a single harvest.  What do they do with underdeveloped hops or ones that have turned all brown.  My guess is that they make pellets!

Big ones!  Most Chinook hops that are ready to pick are fairly large cones.

Cone sizes and shapes vary with variety.  Hopefully, my hand gives you an idea about the size of the chinook hop cones.

Centennial hops at the top of the wire.  A terminating cone at the right.

When hops reach the top of the guide line, they often continue growing horizontally.  When a branch or vine ends, it always terminates with a cone.  When it does this, it will grow no further.  Also, if a climbing vine tip gets cut or damaged, it will no longer continue to grow.

A couple of our Centennial hop mounds don't always grow as thick and lush as the Chinook trio.  

Many hop plants are not successful until the second season.  I think the above vine was a mound that needed to be replanted.  Regardless, some mounds only have one or two vines that climb and yield is fairly low.

These cones are moist and heavy and will likely be ready in 2 weeks.

Time to fire up the dehydrator!  I need to build the box fan dehydrator I've sketched out in my mind a few years back.  If anyone wants to see how I have been dehydrating and storing my homegrown hops, click here for dehydrating hops or storing hops.  Cheers!

Hop Farm July 12 2009 Part 1

First harvest today! Michelle and I picked the Chinook and Centennial. We only picked the ready hops to half-fill two paper grocery bags. There's plenty more on the way. The magnum is doing well though 2 out of 5 mounds were ravaged by prohibition rabbits. Last, the vojvodina is a bit slow this year and just started budding.

Hops Storage

After a great weekend of wine tasting in Santa Barbara county and back from a summer of adventure, its time to get all the hops off the vines and in storage.
This year, we could always pick more than we could handle. Since the dehydrator can only hold about 4 square feet of hops, I spread the rest on a table on top of a paper towel.Spacing between the cones is key. Too close and the moisture gets trapped and turns your hops brown. Another thing I've found useful is to have a fan lightly blowing on the hops. An overhead fan would probably work the best but I just use a stand up fan. Above is about 7 ounces (dry weight) of centennial hops.
Here's some of the bigger centennial cones. Large but not as big as the chinook cones. Magnum cones get this big as well and the vojvodina hops are significantly smaller.
I dehydrate all of my hops until they are papery dry. After, I cut a foodsaver bag at three notch lengths (marked on the side of the bag roll). This size allows me to seal hops in 1-1.5 ounce incraments, perfect for sizing hop additions.
I fill the hops to the top of the bag then gently squish them down so there's enough head space to close the vacuum sealer mechanism and to ensure a clean seal.
Before sucking and sealing, I like to distribute the hops evenly in the bag. This will allow the bag to seal flat for easier storage.
While the foodsaver is vacuuming out the air, I press lightly to make sure the bag will seal as flat as possible. This is important since freezer room is really limited. Several flat bags take up very little space compared to clumpy bags.
Mission accomplished, hops are now vacuum sealed for seasonal storage in the freezer.
I adjust my scale to the weight of a three-notch length foodsaver bag and easily weigh the contents after sealing.
Label, date, and weight. Hopefully, you can see how flat the hops have been pressed after vacuum sealing.
In my hand is over 1/2 pound of great hops!

Centennial and Magnum Harvest

My wife, Michelle, and brother-in-law, Jim, picking as many centennial hops as we can manage dehydrating at the time. I also picked all of the ready hops from the magnum vines. Though we picked quite a bit, we didn't even make a dent in the quantity of ready-to-pick hops.