Hop Farm Season 2011 Begins!

Around this time of year, it's usually a good idea to start getting ready for the upcoming hop growing season.  My hop farm is located in sun drenched San Diego North County.  I have three terraced rows on a north-facing slope.  Each row is setup to accommodate ten mounds (for a total of 30 mounds) which seems more than enough to handle on a casual basis.  Here's several images to show the preseason hop farm:

Hop Farm from the top of the mulch hill.

Hop Farm from the east.

Detail of the terraces with lots of weeds to pull.

Hop Farm from the lower east slope.

Hop Farm from the lower west slope. Avocado tree to the right.

Today, Michelle and I set out mostly to start weeding and mulching.  The ground was nicely wet from recent rains so the weeds were easy to pull. While we worked for quite some time, we were only able to take care of the top row (Chinook and Centennial).  Next weekend we will try to recruit Kara to come and help with the bottom two rows (although the outlook looks like rain again).

My wife, Michelle, taking out those weeds!

After the weed pulling (which never stops) and mulching, we'll need another work day to prune the mounds.   Essentially, this involves shoveling and cutting around the mound to trim down the roots to prevent the plants from popping up away from the mound.  This should also present opportunities to find rhizomes to share with others.  I have a few QUAFF buddies already signed up for Chinook and Centennial rhizomes.

Hop Farm Row 1 (Chinook and Centennial) weeded and mulched.

Beyond pruning comes trellis maintenance and restringing.  All of my posts seem to be in good condition this year.  I will need to re-anchor the end-posts of each row to help keep the top guide-line taut.   A small buried cement block might do the trick.  I know that hop farms restring each year with twine but I have been using wire.  I'm finding the wire tends to rust out after one or two season so perhaps I should also look into finding a better solution for this as well.

Row 1 from the west, after weeding and mulching.

Another concern, I need to find better solutions for the problem with rabbits and gophers chewing on the vines.  In some cases, these wascal wabbits have chewed mature cone bearing vines that essentially put an early season stop to some of my mounds.  Possibly a simple chicken-wire cage will keep the nasty gnawers at bay.  See some of my previous hops seasons' blog posts on this topic and more.

One Chinook hop mound seems to already be breaking soil.

As for this year's last planning element, I want to replace all the mounds in the middle row with two new varieties of "C" hops.  While the former two varieties,  Magnum and Vojvodina, had a good running, last year had a significant decrease in viability and yield.  It's time to get rid of these and move on.  Considering the success of my Chinook and Centennial mounds, I believe other "C" hops will likely do as well.  I recently pre-ordered Columbus hops and am crossing my fingers for Cluster or Citra to be available this year.  Even Simcoe (we'll write it "Cimcoe" to keep with the theme) would be desirable.

Here's a couple of links for buying rhizomes directly from the source.  As of now, no rhizome source has a list of what will be available this year.  Several homebrew suppliers and stores will also have rhizomes available beginning next month.  I got really excited when More Beer! announced their rhizome pre-order a couple of weeks ago and jumped at the chance to order Columbus hops.  Their pre-sale deal is only good until March 1st.
Rhizomes from Hops Direct
Rhizomes from Northwest Hops

Hops Direct made a YouTube video series last season to show the hop farming process.  They're great if you haven't seen them yet.  Hop farmer guru at Hops Direct, Stacy Puterbaugh, shows you how to plant hops and even what a large scale hop harvest looks like.  I'll share some of these videos here as the season moves on.

Hops TV, Episode 1: Planting Hops

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 2

Here's a look at the second wave of hop flowers coming in. As in the past, the second harvest has very dense clusters with the Chinook plants.

2009 Hop Growing Season Begins

Ed and Michelle are helping to clear the mounds of weeds. There's lots to do over several weeks including pruning mounds, replanting the bottom row, testing irrigation, restringing trellis wire, fertilizing, and mulching. All hops (except mounds that were mauled last year) have broken ground. By the look of the growth, they look like they broke ground weeks ago. I'll turn on the irrigation in a few weeks when they start taking off.

Hop Farm March 28 2009

The start of the 2009 hops season is here. Time to clear the spring weeds and waken the mounds. First looks.

Vojvodina and Centennial Harvest

Here's me picking the vojvodina hops. The ladder is 6 feet to give you an idea where the top of the trellis is. Vojvodina has a very low yield, small cones, and are delicate to pick. The bitterness is on the lower end and quite smooth. The aromatics remind me of hallertauer but its more subtle. We filled a half brown grocery bag with all of the vojvodina cones that were ready, some new cone growth was apparent. We also filled an entire bag with centennial. We barely put a dent in the hop picking today. The vines that made it this year are just loaded! Sent from my mobile phone.

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.

Hop Farm, July 28 2008

Harvest Time!

We were at the hop farm this weekend for my wife's PhD party when I noticed that several vines are ready for harvesting. Actually, there were more hops ready than I can possibly handle to process. Next year, I simply have to make a large dehydrator. Today we picked about a pound or so of chinook and centennial hops (that's what it will amount to after dehydration).
Here's the current view of the farm. All but one mound has grown (the bottom row chinook that was torn up by rabbits). Magnum, as usual has just started cone production. Though the top row centennial had trouble getting started this year, its counter part on the bottom row is nearly ready for harvest. I picked all I could from the top row which was completely ready.
Of course, its always nice to have help. My wife, Dr. Michelle, and Dr. Courtney (I don't think I could have found smarter assistants!) helped pick the chinook. There were so many to pick that I had to tell them to stop. Our dehydrator can only hold so much and while I can lay out hops on tables in the house to start drying, we're leaving for Hawaii on Friday. I want to make sure everything is dehydrated and vacuum sealed by then.
Above is a view of the top wire chinook. A few weeks ago, these were just getting started. The density is likely attributed to a good watering schedule and a good manure base at the season start.
I'm always impressed with the size of the chinook hops we grow. They are large, healthy, and very abundant. Also, their stability for storage is amazing. In the background are the hops that didn't fit in the dehydrator. They'll need to wait for about 48 hours before being moved to dehydrator.
Here's one of the bigger of the chinook cones. In my last blog, people wanted to know if I had small hands. Very good question since it seems unlikely to have a hop cone the length of any finger. I wouldn't call my hands small by they aren't large either. My glove size is typically small to medium.
If my hand doesn't give you a sense of how big these cones are, then perhaps this will better scale the chinook hops.
Here's the dehydrator we use. The capacity is great for its compact size. Considering that we only use it for hops, it readily fits in a cabinet for storage during the rest of the year. Though building a larger dehydrator will be very necessary next year, this works for smaller batches.
A nicer dehydrator can be a bit expensive, even for a used one on eBay. To dehydrate hops, it is very important that no heat is applied. I keep our dehydrator at 85 where it produces no heat. The only heat comes from the electrical fan in operation. I feel like I've posted all these details in my last blog, dejavu! This dehydrator has settings for other applications but we only used it for hops.
Above you can see the four racks in the dehydrator. Next harvest, I'll show how much surface area this particular model has. I think the racks are 1 foot by 1 foot but they might be a bit bigger. Straight off the vine, hops typically need about 48 hours. The hops on the table will only need about 24 hours.

Hop Farm, July 2 2008

Just another update on the farm. The centennial vines on the bottom row have finally taken off. Unfortunately, rabbits continue to beat on the new chinook section. One mound was even dug up completely. There's nothing I can do for that one this season. Next year, the bottom row will receive more attention to protect them from rabbits. Below shows before trimming. I used all of the trimmings to border the new chinook plants for protection.
Chinook is doing well with hops. Below shows the hop density with many more on the way. I picked about one ounce that was ready but most need another week or two. Just have to wait until the cones are lighter and paper-like.
The chinook has just started its second flowering and its really an explosion! I don't think they have flowered with this kind of density before. Below, you can see a cluster area of new cones.

Hop Farm, June 22 2008

The back-flow preventer sprung a leak so we made a trip to the hop farm to replace it. I was also curious to see if the trimmings barrier strategy was effective.
Turns out that a number of chinook cones were ready for harvesting. A JUNE HARVEST! After dehydrating the picked cones, it will likely amount to 1.5 ounces or so.
The weather in southern California has been very warm. I bumped up the watering duration to 1 hour twice daily to ensure they are getting plenty.

Above is a good image to see the progress the bottom row has made in just a week. Even the far left of the bottom row is making progress (previously mauled by rabbits and squirrels). Looking to the middle row, there's more vegetation than last week. Again, I trimmed back but not too much. The main vines have got to be protected!

Here's a wider shot showing the growth during the past week. Established vines are all in cone production!