homegrown hops 2016

Hope someone can help me out....did I make a mistake setting up my trellis right up against my red brick chimney? Cascade plants growing up an arbor in the back yard are going crazy but this is the second year in a row that the Nugget plant climbing the trellis has started out well but is now going brown and dry.
Is the chimney holding too much heat and burning up the plant?

 

Has anybody here tried using spent Starsan as a phosphorous source for hops?

 

I was literally thinking of doing this as my burrs are coming on and I was trying to think of where I have a ready source of phosphorus. Are you thinking of adding it at the base or spraying the leaves?

 

Could be...but hops are pretty resilient and will usually just require a little more water. How's the soil where they are planted? Sometimes lime will leach into the soil around cement and mortar.

 

Some talk over on another site seems to indicate that you can dilute the old StarSan and use it at like 10-100 more diluted than normal. Also someone was saying to neutralize the low pH with baking soda.

 

My soil is already so alkaline I don't worry too much about the pH, but it's already pretty dilute at 1 oz per 5 gallons.

 

Forget the phosphorous....good for fruiting/flowering, but sulfur is what you really need to reduce alkalinity and ph.

 

The phosphorus is for the fruiting/flowering hops. The alkalinity/pH was more about whether to neutralize the StarSan prior to application to keep it from altering the soil pH too much.

 

Yes, and lowering the ph in most of New Mexico and Nevada is not a problem with even normally diluted Starsan...that was my point

 

Picked a couple of loose gallons of hops two weeks ago that went into my 24-7 Dark Lager that is fermenting in a carboy under the kitchen table. The bines have hops at all stages of development so I'll probably have two more picks this year and get another six-to-eight gallon bags of hops from it. I haven't checked the progress of the hops on the arbor next door (my neighbors don't have any interest in beer or brewing) so hopefully there'll be several more gallons of hops to come from that as well.

 

Going to have a few Cascades this year, I'm thinking. This is only 2/3 of the amount...and isn't doing it justice.

 

Nice, mine are slow but coming

 

Couple update shots:

 

Chinook?

 

I harvested my Cascades about two weeks ago (end of July) and I am having to string up the new growth already.

 

Nope, Cascade.

 

Pulled 3# of wet Columbus off on Saturday for a 100% Wet, 100% Whirlpool, 100% Brett IPA. I yielded 7 gallons of 1.060 OG wort after the WP, and split it to 2 Better Bottles. Will taste in a few days to see if I want to toss in my Chinook wet as a "dry" hop addition. If I do that I will probably yield about 5 gallons into the keg.

 

Harvested this weekend Sunday. Used 60 oz wet right away for three brews, 2 APAs and 1AIPA. Just packaged another 22 oz dried last night. Think I nailed harvest timing this year; hops smelled outstanding!