Beer Forum

Has anyone started to harvest any of their hops yet? What do you do after you pick the cones?

I haven't harvested my own in my backyard, but I went down to one of the hop farms today and got 2 bines pulled down of EKG's. It might be a bit early up here in Cascadia for hop harvest, but some of the early season hops like EKGs and Centennials are now being harvested.

What you do with them is make a massive fresh hop ale, dump 2.5 pounds per 5 gallon batch all in at T minus 5-10 minutes, stir like crazy, and cool your wort down FAST. Lock in that hop essence that gets lost with kilning of hops.

hmmm. lol I doubt 2 first year vines can produce 2 pounds plus! lol Although that does sound like a bitchin idea! I just have to come up with a few extra ounces of fresh hops

I picked some goldings and laid them on a window screen over a red wagon for a day. Then I bagged them up, vacuum sealed and froze them. I probably have enough to dryhop 5 gallons but I have more cones ripening.

So far I have harvested twice off of my 4 year old Cascade plant, I haven't weighed what I have picked but I have filled 1.5 five gallon buckets this year.
More than likely that is only about 2/3 of what I will get this season.
I'll post some pics soon.

holy cow! 1.5 five gallon buckets from one plant! thats ridiculous! lol nice work. do you fertalize?

Here's an idea I'm stealing from Alton Brown. Get a box fan and a few square cheap furnace filters of the same size as your fan, the least expensive ones. Lay your box fan on a couple of boards blowing DOWN, then lay a filter over that, a layer of hops, another filter, layer of hops, another filter, and so on until you end up with a final filter. Suck the air through on low until hops are dried, a couple of days. This should dry the hops without "cooking" them with hot air. You may want to tape the stack of filters together, I'm thinking just wide masking tape, so they don't shift around.

HTH,
Alan

ResQ wrote:holy cow! 1.5 five gallon buckets from one plant! thats ridiculous! lol nice work. do you fertalize?

I used fertilizer the first two years but I haven't bothered the last couple.
I have a timer set to water it every morning and it gets almost 100% sun.
I also dump star san, trub, and dregs on it quite often, don't know if that counts as fertilizer.