Grow Your Own - It's hops pre-order season!

A lot of home brewers eventually get around to the idea of growing their own hops.  I will be trying my hand at it this year.  From what I’ve heard and read, it’s really easy to get started, and hops are a very gratifying crop to produce.

While I haven’t grown any hops myself yet, I will be doing so this year, and have been doing my research.  If you’d like to try it out, now is the time to pre-order your hop.  Morebeer.com has started accepting pre-orders, and if you’re local, you should be able to pre-order some through the homebrewery. 

To help us on our hop-growing adventure, I’ve pulled some knowledge from various sources, such as squidoo.com (just some rudimentary knowledge) and The Homebewer’s Garden, which I consider a very great source for a how-to on growing hops.  One great article can be found in the Brewing Techniques archive.  While you’re there, check out the article on all-grain brewing.  It’s good stuff.  You might also check into sites like BYO Magazine and Zymurgy for articles on how to grow hops, as well.  

A hop plant is what is called a bine, not a vine.  Bines are branches which wrap themselves around objects to climb.  These differ from vines, which shoot out little tendrils to grab whatever they’re climbing (think of ivy or cucumber plants).  When growing hops, you’ll have to have something for the bines to climb, such as twine or string, or some trellis.  They should be planted in full sun.  If you can plant them on a side of your house which faces south, that will ensure they get plenty of sun. 

Hops should be planted in the early spring (May at the latest) after the last frost.  Plant them about 1-3 inches deep with their buds facing up.  Make sure they have good drainage or they’ll rot in the ground if they sit in water too long.  To avoid the rotting problem, a lot of growers plant their hops in hills along the ground.  Every couple of years (or annually after the second year, if you want), you’ll want to dig down to the hop plant’s root ball and cut away some of the mass, since the hop plant will shoot roots out which will produce more bines further out.  Some of the brewers I know who have grown hops ran into this problem, and eventually dug up the entire root ball, burned it, and started over just to fix the issue. 

To avoid all of this (the trimming, the digging, the burning), you can grow your hops in containers.  There are disadvantages to growing in containers, though.  You’ll limit the size of the plant, and if it doesn’t have proper drainage, you’ll still end up with rotten roots and a dead plant.  If you do grow in containers, make sure the container is at least 5 gallons in size (the bigger the better, really) and set it somewhere where you can stake some string into the dirt and tie it off higher up.  If you’re using string or twine, you can always nail one end into the eave of your house and train the bine to climb the string rather than using a trellis or erecting a pole in the middle of your yard.  Just make sure your twine is strong.

You should know before you start that hop plants can grow 20-40 feet high if they have good soil, enough room to grow, and a line to climb, so prepare to see a lot of green.  Even if your house’s eave is not this high, you can still use it, but you might get some hops growing along the roof of your house when it gets to the top.  Hop plants don’t produce many hops until they are allowed to grow at least 5 feet high, so trailing the hops along the ground may not result in a very high yield.  Healthy hop plants can grow up to a foot per day, so plan ahead.

If you are going to grow hops, you should be aware of a few pests which will attack them.  Downy mildew, wilt, hop aphids, spider mites, and cats are all nuisances to hop growers.  For all but the last, check this article from Brewing Techniques for good advice on spotting them early and treating them.  The thing about cats seems weird, I know, but I’ve heard from fellow home brewers that cats love to chew on hop bines and will eat whatever hops they can reach.  This may not be a big deal if you have a good crop unless the cat eats through a bine and kills it.  To prevent it, you can wrap some sort of guard around the bottom (tomato cage, chicken wire, etc.) to prevent them from eating your precious lupulin cones.

For the best results, plan on several harvesting sessions and pick only the hops that are ready when you harvest.  You’ll know they are ready if they are papery and light, and bounce back if you squeeze them gently.  If they’re too green, they’ll feel moist and sort of soft.  If you pick one and find your hands take up the small quickly and the lupulin glands are making your hands slightly sticky, the hops are probably ready to harvest. 

Once harvested, hops have to be dried.  To properly store hops, you have to get the moisture content down to around 10%.  When harvested, they are typically still 70% moisture.  You can dry hops in a food dehydrator if you have one, but most of us don’t.  You could also use a well-ventilated oven, but you may end up stinking up your house.  The best method is to build an oast, or homemade hop dryer.  The essentials are that you do not exceed 140 degrees F and that you allow good air circulation.  Fattymattybrewing.com has a good pdf on how to build a hop oast right here.  The beauty of this oast is it can be easily dismantled at the end of the season for storage. (image: http://fattymattybrewing.com/brewlog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/oast_plans.png)

Once you’ve dried your hops, you can then use or store them.  If you’re using them, remember not to rely on them for accurate bittering hops.  Unless you know the accurate alpha acid content, you may get some unexpected results.  It may be better to use your homegrown hops for aroma and flavor hops instead.  Of course, they are always excellent for dry-hopping.  When I grow mine this year, I plan on brewing hop-harvest ale made with fresh hops from start to finish, but it’ll be an experiment more than anything else.  If I get the bitterness wrong, I won’t mind. 

When you store your hops long-term, remember that light, air, and heat are the enemies of hops.  When I get around to harvesting, I will be using Ziploc vacuum-style bags and then putting those into a light-blocking bag (paper or black plastic) before freezing them.  If you’re a real stickler, you can first fill the Ziplocs with an inert gas to prevent oxidation, but that’s too extreme for my taste.  When I’m ready to use them, they’ll still be almost as fresh as the day I picked them.