Home grown hops 2022

[Meatymc]

Brewed 50 litre Green Hop beer today. Used Brewers Gold and Challenger for bittering and 750 gm of freshly picked Bramling Cross for aroma. No idea how it could turn out.

How are things looking?

I've been staring at the best Styrian I've ever grown and the remaining Fuggles - some cones of which are over 2" long! Have neither the time to dry nor room to store but simply can't bear the thought of them going to waste so I'm going to do a wet hop brew tomorrow. I'm almost out of grain so it's going to be an 'all-in' bitter by the looks of things although I haven't yet brewed a straightforward bitter I've been happy with.

[Eric]

The beer is casked, 27.5 litres in an old Boots plastic pressure barrel with 23 in a not quite so old Youngs' PB, the extra half litre priming with added invert sugar, pure fluke of course, but have just this moment realised no sample was saved for the hydrometer. I'll do that now before completing this post and allow for the priming.

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It seems to be in the right region but will take a better look when it has properly settled.

Fermentation took off nicely, then went crazy after I'd not noticed the sensor had been displaced. Too late maybe but got air circulating overnight with door open and the vessel uncovered. The next morning it took off again, so wound some microbore copper pipe around the FV, fed by the chiller and wrapped all in insulation. What will be, will be.

I wasn't expecting much, but now even less. Not having picked hops since brewday due to frequent rain showers and other unavoidable activities, this morning was warm and dry, and the hops are vastly improved. It would seem they were picked too soon.

Hope to get the rest picked next weekend and see if something might be sorted to dry them properly.

[clarets7]

My Challenger are only just ready, so hope to pick them tomorrow, not sure whether to dry them or make a green hop beer. There were loads of hops in the hedgerows at Eastbridge in Suffolk last week, but again they didn't look quite ready, and it was wet so didn't pick any. I did manage to get some rooted cuttings though that seem to have survived so far, fingers crossed.

[Cobnut]

I picked my challenger on Friday and they were vacuum packed today lowing me to pick my Prima Donna.

Challenger give me less than last year; 170g wet, 52g dry

I’ve picked 298g of Prima Donna which are dying and should be ready to vac pack Wednesday or Thursday.

Cascade are not yet ready. Perhaps another week or 2.

Btw Clarets, did you try the Anchor in Walberswick?

[clarets7]

Btw Clarets, did you try the Anchor in Walberswick?

Sadly no, didn't even get to Southwold . We're back in the spring though and staying in Southwold so that is a much easier walk!

[Eric]

Apart from those used in the Green Hop brew, there are 400g of nearly dry Bramling Cross. Current test for dryness is to place hops in an upturned grain bag with its neck tightly held around the outlet of an operating hairdryer and look for condensation on my glasses when looking down on hop bag. There are still Bramling Cross on the remnants of the bine, but they are probably not work collecting and a second BX has yet to be harvested, but it is a much smaller plant.

Just taken 200g of the largest Northdown cones to dry, maybe 10% of the total available crop. Those are much more aromatic and stickier that the BX.

The Green Hop beer has conditioned for a little over a week and is smelling nicely with mint dominating, vastly superior to the Southwold Bitter, although it is quite reasonable. Thinking that using Ringwood yeast for the Bitter might have been a poor choice.

[Cobnut]

Eric, received wisdom appears to be that one should weigh the wet hops and aim to dry them to 20-25% of this. So far, I’ve not had the patience to go below 30% and this seems to work ok. The Prima Donna I picked yesterday late morning are now down to just under 40% of their wet weight, so should be dry enough by morning or lunchtime tomorrow and should give me about 90g; plenty for a 23L batch. I do pack them in a vacuum food packer which I reckon helps keep them in reasonable “health” for keeping in the freezer. I also do this with leftover part packs of commercial hops too rather than binning them.

[Eric]

The only hops I've ever binned were those I grew. Those were binned because they went brown, so I assumed they were not properly dried. Properly dried, bought hops are kept until they are used, and opened packets are resealed for later use.

This year has been very unusual, my outdoor tomatoes are fantastic, better than any we can buy locally, and my hops have only blown down once, and that was in June. Leaves are usually torn to shreds if their supports hold, but this year we have had a summer like I have never known in this part of the world and today I picked some almost 3-inch long Northdown cones. I've had little success in the past, but I learned with those is that there is no fixed weight ratio of picked to dry, it all depends more upon what stage they are picked and the amount of retained moisture. This yearear I have weighed them when picked, monitor them as they dry, them a blast of hot air and if they then lose weight, they are still wet.

This I'm now doing with 200 gm of Northdown and if I can find a weight at which they are definitely dry, then the rest will be dried to the same level. Freezer space for hops will soon be a luxury.

[Eric]

200 gm Northdown reduced to 75 gm. Will see if they reduce further in the next day or so. Meanwhile collected another 400 gm of the larger cones.

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Some of the further 400 gm cones collected, Northdown to the left with remnants of the Bramling Cross to the right ready to be cut back and composted.

[Cobnut]

Eric, They look fantastic!

These are this year's Challenger - a few look a little brown, but lots of nice sticky lupulin and they smell great.

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[Eric]

Those look nice too, I like Challenger very much, for both bittering and aroma. Coniston Bluebird is made that way I believe. Some of my cones have spots of brown, but was told, and have seen, it doesn't detract much.

The 400 and 200 gm of Northdown now weigh just over 200 gm, so those have been packaged. Had some of my Green Hop beer last night and it had a characteristic noticed in Adnams Bitter from Fuggles, a sort of pulsating, almost pepperlike feeling on the palate that I can't truly describe. The aroma is vastly different, but this characteristic is distinctly there.

My hops have a minor degree of stickiness, it hangs on my fingers and gets under my nails, but nothing like I've found on good commercial hops. I've been threatening to dig them up for a while now, but haven't had the heart and this year's crop makes this more difficult. There's a piece of common land nearby and twice planted rhizomes only to not find them again on later visits. I planted a second Bramling Cross at the other end of the garden and while this year it didn't grow as big, it does have a reasonable number of decent sized flowers to harvest. That I will remove and replace it with either the Saaz or Cascade that are in pots, but I've forgotten which is which. If I find a good spot and summon the courage, will take a spade and plant that BX, which I should find if it comes up next year.

[Cobnut]

My Cascade were picked on Sunday afternoon. Not an especially warm day, but at least dry.

Sadly, the hops were a great disappointment despite the bine having spread with gay abandon. The vast majority of them were tiny and significant parts of the bine had tiny aphids which I didn't fancy having in my beer, so I discarded these parts.

Last year I picked 1138g of Cascade, but this year it was barely a quarter of that at a mere 312g. They are still drying. I should get about 100g - sufficient for a batch of ale and at least them do smell pleasant.

My wife is angling for me to build a pergola on the back of our (South facing) house. I may oblige her and then relocate the Cascade to take better advantage of the sunshine

[Eric]

Yes, I can feel your disappointment when comparing with last year's performance. I didn't have that expectation, just hope, but if this year's outcome is to become normal, County Durham will become a Kent on Boulder Clay.

Many smaller cones have been left unpicked, 430 gm, the last of the Bramling Cross were harvested on Sunday and dried to 115 gm, making with the others 540 gm, and I can't see all those being used even if they are fully dried to last the test of time. With regular rain since then and possibly most of the Northdown remaining to pick, it would be nice to think those might be collected and potentially further improve my drying technique.

Good luck with the pergola.

[clarets7]

The vast majority of them were tiny ...

Same with my Challenger, but I did manage to pick enough cones for a green beer and dried what was left over, only 30g though Should be much better next year though as I've improved the soil all around them and raised it by a few inches.
Just bottled the beer this morning and pleasantly surprised, very fresh and spicy. Bittering hops were Bramling Cross, Cascade and Challenger (was supposed to all Challenger but my stock keeping let me down) with the green Challenger being added at 10m and flameout, only 90g in total. Fingers crossed will still be as nice in a couple of weeks time.

[Eric]

A bit disappointing, but you have a green hop beer. My 50 litre green hop brew could probably have been a lot better had the hops been picked later, but when picked were the best ever grown here and hadn't expected them to improve at all.

We had strong winds yesterday and there was a break in the rain until mid-morning allowing the picking of 778 gm of Northdown. Only the larger cones were picked and there are still many more left on the bines, but those are mostly smaller and still very wet after heavy rain yesterday afternoon. Thery might be dry enough tomorrow, but the wind has dropped as higher pressure moves in, so fingers crossed.

The 778 gm of pickings now weigh 367 gm, so still a lot of moisture to remove.