Growing Hops 2010
Hop flowers budded today on my Mt. Hoods, but my Cascades have been attacked by aphids and aren't looking as strong. The organic herbicide/ pesticide I used didn't help much. For some reason the aphids don't like the Mt. Hood.
Evil creatures those aphids are. They got to my pumpkins and just about decimated them before I could do anything about it. I have part of one vine that still survivng, but it doesn't look like I'll be brewing any pumpkin ales with homegrown pumpkins.
Fortunately, they seem to have left the hops alone. I lost one EKG plant, but that wasn't due to bugs. I think that and a nearby tree were poisoned by pranksters, possibly a neighbor...
3rd year of my cascades, and after 2 years of fussing over them, I just left them alone. I didn't even cut the bines from last year, let them grow up over them. I used compost from spent grains like before, but that was it. Looks like it was the right thing to do, because they took off. Looks like I'll get a half pound dried out of them, after only getting 6 cones last year. yea, that's right 6 cones, lol.
My cascades are monstrous, the Centennials are doing well too. The NB's and Goldings could be doing better though. One way or another I'll end up with a ton of hops. I do the composted grains as well.
My Cascades are doing monstrous, following a slow start, with the Glacier with a seemingly faster start, really just barely hanging in there. My Cascades have started to burr out strongly, but haven't seen any on the Glacier as of yet. With my inexperience, it is way to soon to make a judgment on harvest.
My hops have really filled out and the other day we had some very strong winds which broke the twine they were hanging on. Now I have to try and figure out how to restring them.
No kinked bines I hope.....
My cascades are second year and I let them go nuts. Some nice big cones, I think I may harvest them tomorrow.
Man I wished I owned a big brick house, These would look a whole lot cooler smothering that than they do on my shed! 
My 1st year vines are just starting to produce cones. Maybe I'll get a little something to harvest this year, lol.
Harvested some hops today. Took me almost 3 hours and my arms are pretty scratched up and itchy. My Willamettes and Centennials bit the dust in the past week unfortunately and really dried out on the bine so I'll only yield probably an ounce of each. My Cascades however went crazy this year and I filled an entire grocery brown bag today which came out to be about 4 pounds.
I'm going to look into making a tool to make plugs this year so they're easier to store.
FirePitBrew wrote:
I'm going to look into making a tool to make plugs this year so they're easier to store.
Hey FPB. Did you come up with anything you can share? I will have three sources of home-grown this year and am planning to sort them out a bit better than in the past, but freezer room will be a premium. I am thinking hop plugs will be a lifesaver. SHMBO will really not like it if I try to take a bushel basket's worth of room in the freezer this year. Can't really say as I blame her.
Status Check In.
My Cascade seemed strong through out the year, and is almost ready to harvest, but the Glacier is the surprise. Weak bines with really late growth and no flowers. Then after the Cascade hop flowers were already nearing full size, suddenly I start seeing burs all over the weak little Glacier bines. It will harvest later than the Cascade, but from the looks of it will be much more in terms of weight. Here is a picture showing both trellises. Cascade on the left with Glacier on the right.
Here is a closeup of the top of the Cascade trellis. 
And a closeup of the top of the Glacier trellis.
Now that I seem to have paid enough attention to figure out the photobucket use, posting these pictures is getting a bit out of control......
Crabnut wrote:
Hey FPB. Did you come up with anything you can share?
I think I've come up with something. It's cheap and ghetto fantastic. I haven't tried it yet but I'll let you know how it works. It consists of a piece of 1.5" pvc pipe with a removable end cap and a C-clamp and a circular wood block slightly smaller than 1.5" to act as a piston. I'm not sure if that's going to give me enough pressure to compact them into a puck but we'll see what happens.
Harvested close to a pound wet of cascades. looks like I'll be able to get about 4 batches worth of aroma from them. I find that whole hops have a much better smell than pellet when dry hopping.
bruguru wrote:
I find that whole hops have a much better smell than pellet when dry hopping.
Oh go ahead! Rain on my parade.
I suspect the over-processing necessary to make pellets (I believe they actually grind them up) would impact the lupulin glands. Do you find a similar problem when you use plugs? No grinding there, but I have never used plugs before unless you count some of the really well packaged vacuum packed hops from my LHBS.
Search Home Brewing Knowledge Base
Custom Search
|