This year I've had my first decent crop of hops from my garden 300g of Cascade and First Gold. I’m really excited about turning these into a very fresh beer.
I've been growing hops in my garden for a few years now. Hops are perennial plants and take a year or so to establish which means the good crops don't come straight away. My First Gold plant is 3 years old, the Cascade is 2 years old.
Hops like the warmer end of the English climate, and lots of sun. I live in London and have a tiny garden, the hops grow on west and east facing fences. As much as possible I encourage the bines to trail up along trellising and other plants, which isn't optimal and they’s prefer full sun, but looks really good (which is half the point of growing them).
Knowing when to pick the hops is a bit tricky. When the hop flowers are ready depends on the type of plant and the location they are growing in. Commercially September is the peak hop picking time. But my hops weren’t ready that early, in fact mine were only really ready at the end of September.
How do you know when the hops are ready to pick? When they are too young they are wet feeling, perfectly green and when you press them in your fingers they stay compressed for a bit. When they are ready to pick there are some good signs:
- They feel dry and papery
- The tips of some of the leaves go brown
- When compressed the hops spring back to shape quickly
- When you rub the hops in your fingers you get a big hop aroma and the cone disintegrates quickly
- The hops come away easily from the bine
My First Gold hops were ready earlier than the Cascade by 2 weeks, which meant I left the Cascade crop on the bines for a bit longer and picked the First Gold first.
Last year I used the hops straight away. This year I didn't have time to brew straight away and use the hops to make a green hop beer. So i looked into ways of drying the hops at home. Many people opt for a net or screen set up by a sunny window, but by early October the sun isn't reliable like it is in early September so in order to keep the the hops from oxidising too much (which destroys the aromatics) I tried drying them in my oven. The temperature needs to be as low as possible to avoid oxidisation.
For me this was about 40C. I arranged half a kilo on three baking trays for 2-3 hours, stirring the hops every now and then to get an even result. After this time the hops were excellently dried. This removed 80 - 85% of the water (about right) and final weight was between 100g and 80g depending on the batch. I stuffed these into freezer bags, squeezed as much air out as possible and used a food seal clip to attempt to make airtight. Ideally i’d use a vacuum seal, but i don't have one and this would do if i use the hops quickly.
I made a beer with the Cascade hops that I’ll detail in the next post.
