Homegrown hops 2020

I picked mine a little later than I should have and some was already browned. Managed only 7 oz. dried Cascade. My Perle hops are currently drying, should be about 4 oz. Not even a pound this year. Need a kick in the arse to get picking sooner next year!

 

I got hit hard by Japanese beetles this year. Two of my three 3-year plants failed to produce anything appreciable. Just too much stress from all the damage. Strangely, my two 1-year plants produced the best. 12 oz fresh from cascade, and almost 2 lbs from GLH Prussian! My one 3-year plant to produce, glacier, managed about 10 oz. Amazing how the beetles seemed to prefer two plants out of the five. Next year I will resume bombing them with Sevin. That kills on contact at least. I thought I would try neem oil this year, but it just couldnt keep up with them.

 

Sounds like my columbus... out of 21 plants i only managed 8oz dry...3rd year as well... And yeah, I started picking late too.

 

So one of my Nugget bines eventually recovered enough from the Japanese beetle leaf damage to out out some cones. A few of them are really long

 

Those are nice looking!

 

It is a fallacy that when you thaw frozen wet hops that they will become a soggy mess. I have vacuum sealed, frozen and used wet hops for a number of years. They actually freeze very well.

 

More hop **** anyone?
Actually, there's a fence near my apartment that has a hop plant growing on it. I've waited until to see if the person who planted it would come and harvest the hop cones. I estimate between 50 to 100 cones are ripe for the picking. So far, no one from the company which is on the other side of the fence has harvested, so I think by now, the original planter has either found another job, been transfered or has retired. I pick one cone to test it, and here are the pics I took.

The aroma is super strong. This is very likely a Noble hop. Piney, earthy, powerful spicy green aromas. I cut open the cone and for me this was the first time ever to view the inside of a live hop.

I made a tea of this cone and let it steep for 10 minutes. I was amazed at how overpoweringly bitter it was. Just one cone packed so much bitterness? Wow. However, other than bitterness, there's almost no other flavor except earthy tones. Seeing that I'm in Germany, there's a strong chance this is either Tettnang, Hallertauer Hersbrücke or Mittelfrüh or maybe more likely Hallertauer Magnum. What do y'all think?
How much should I use in a beer and how can I gage the IBUs?

I've also been thinking of planting another hop plant next spring on my apartment's side of this fence.

 

Tough saying. My first thought was Perle, but not according to the pictures here https://bsgcraftbrewing.com/german-hops . How hot was the water you used? you might have cooked them more then most else, but I have also never had luck making teas with my hops...

I wish I had stopped at a couple of the wild growing ones I have seen this summer and nabbed some cones but alas I did not...

 

I've been growing Ariana and Hull Melon in our backyard here for 3 years, but this is the first year that they really put out a decent number of cones.

Paid my kids to pick them (completely underestimated how much money that was going to cost me...), and ended up with about 700 grams (25 ounces) wet. Might have harvested a few days too early, but the weather here was just about to turn seriously cold and rainy.

Looking forward to my next homebrew day!

 

The link you provided is really helpful. Thanks. From just looking at the pics of the different hops, I'd go with Hallertau Hallertauer Tradition or simply Perle.
From the Hopfensteiner Shop - Perle, and it's described (Tee, hopfenwürzig, Grüne Früchte, Pfeffer or as "tea, spicy, green fruit, pepper"), which fits how I tasted it in tea form:

 

So, phase 1 of the illicit neighbood harvest has been completed. I said "phase 1" because as soon as we pulled the ladder up and started snipping the bines off, mother nature seemed to give her verdict by providing us with a pretty decent drizzle, which coincidentally ended soon after we went inside. Not expecting to get wet, my neighbor/accomplice & I were not dressed for it, and quickly got as much as we could to fill up one bucket and ran inside. Took about 25 minutes, 10 of which we spent talking to passing by neighbors who were astounded that an ingredient for a product they could buy was lurking right under their noses. I let them deeply sniff some cones and they were much impressed with the strong aroma as well as our daring-do as "hobby-brauer."

I baked them in the oven at around 100ºC for 10-12 minutes with the oven fan on full blast until a few hop cones in the back began to turn a light brown. I'm not sure that was the best way, but it seemed to have dried them out & killed all the little critters that were crawling out of everywhere while we were de-leafing them.

First, the bucket full of bines/hops.

2nd, de-leafed and de-bined, which we split 50/50:


The reason I mentioned phase 1 is there'll be a phase 2. In the gloom of late twilight and drizzle, it seems we missed a whole other plant.

The building you see there belongs to Hessische Rundfunk, the local state TV/radio broadcaster's offices. Looks like we need another big bucket.

I think I'll add another hop plant in the beginning of spring to grow along this fence, this time on our side of the fence and a more aroma forward hop.

 

100C is way too hot, you might have burned off the good stuff... You want to be closer to 100F 40C ish. You didn't do it long, but I wonder what impact it will have.

 

I think you're right; it was too hot. A good bit of the aroma was gone, but that's my first experience with fresh, wet hops and now I learned. Nonetheless, I'd planned on using them for bittering additions, and none of the bittering was lost. I think with the next batch I'll put it in the oven at the absolute lowest temp setting and the fan on.

Our apartment is way to small to justify having any of the things sitting around for what would be a once a year operation.

 

I definitely hear you on space concerns... But the food dehydrator is not entirely a one-off per year. More like a 1-off per month? We use ours to make actual beef jerky (which is impossible to get in Germany), dry our excess herbs from the garden (sage tea, mint tea, etc...), and apple rings for the kids.

Having said that, if I hadn't "needed" one for the hops, it definitely wouldn't be worth the money it cost and the space it takes up. It is a heck of a lot easier to buy apple rings than make them...

 

I use my dehydrator a lot this time of year, I pick a lot of mushrooms so they go in, fruits, chillies etc. It's on almost permanently at the moment. Not that I picked a single hop this year, but last year I'd pick hops every day off my plants for about two weeks and dry a batch each day

But then I don't think I use it much for the rest of the year. My last batch of jerky was so tough it put me off doing it again

 

I've always dried mine by spreading them out on a window screen. It works fine for me.

 

One last look at the Cascade before harvesting...



Columbus in the sun: