2017 Hop Plantations, Show Us Your Hop Garden!

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I picked 1 about a week ago and ripped it apart and had a whiff. Smelt grassy to me then. Picked 1 now and smelling better, feels kinda like tissue paper although still a bit of a grassy smell.
Think i will let em ride a bit longer.
 
mondestrunken said:
Apologies for the sh*tty colour exposure here.

Are these brown patches from the heat last weekend or nutrient deficiency?

I've been using blood & bone every month or so since September.

I really want to get some hops this year!!!

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You may be burning them with too much fertilizer. Blood and bone is best added after you harvest the hops and cut them down.
Apply blood and bone in late Autumn as I believe. A big dose. It takes some months to break down into what plants can use properly when the next season comes around. I would just water if you've added that much already.
 
Rocker1986 said:
This is a picture of what I was describing in my last post. The two cones here are clearly different, with the left one clearly deformed compared to a normal one on the right. Its bracts seem to have curled upwards but also inwards, i.e. not flattened out properly - similar to how the leaves were behaving earlier when they were rolled up rather than flat like normal. The feel of it is different as well, it doesn't feel papery like the normal ones, but it doesn't feel moist like they do when they're not ready either. It's kind of soft but stiff at the same time, hard to describe. These deformed cones still have plenty of lupulin and smell pretty much the same as normal ones too.

There are quite a number of cones on the plant that look like this, although most aren't as badly deformed as that one. They appear to be going back more to what they'd normally look like but still retain some of this deformity.

I'm hoping this is just a phase it's going through, like it did with the leaves. New leaves began appearing rolled up not long after I killed off some weeds with broadleaf weed killer and managed to hit literally a couple of really low hop leaves with it, but then after a short while this stopped happening and all the new leaves since have been normal. These cones are obviously coming from the same bines that exhibited the rolled up leaves. I guess time will tell, and especially next season when it regenerates after winter, that first growth will give me an idea if this stupid poison is still causing issues.
Mine looks nothing like that. I imagine that's what a Chernobyl-grown hop looks like...hope you don't have too many like that!
 
AJ80 said:
Mine looks nothing like that. I imagine that's what a Chernobyl-grown hop looks like...hope you don't have too many like that!
Hahah! Nah not too many. Looking at the newer ones that are appearing, they are looking more like the ones with slightly upcurled bracts in N3MI's pictures than that bloody weird looking thing I picked off mine. They might not be perfectly normal like the first couple of harvests but they should be fine to pick when ready. I will keep an eye on them though to make sure they don't go all weird. I'm about to go and throw some Maxibloom on them now, and I'll get up on the planter box and pick what I can reach of the shitty deformed ones and discard them. They're not much use if I can't even tell properly when they're ready to pick anyway.
 
Packaged 600g of dried cascade last night, the kitchen still smells dank. May have an odd conversation with some guests coming about the smell and green flakes everywhere.


Also have a massive dose of 400g of fresh flowers dry hopping a harvest ale. A couple of tastes from gravity samples have been incredible, so much hop character.
 
Two first year Cluster rhizomes,Only planted them two weeks into October so they definitely like the soil profile.

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I’m looking at some of the pics of the hops people have harvested, and I can’t see how they differ to the ones I recently harvested. Mine were deemed to be too young (and smelled that way). I’m looking at them frequently and trying to see if it gets more papery etc.

Can someone please post a pic of what my hops should look like when it’s ready? FWIW I’m growing cascade. I’m also colourblind, so maybe there’s an obvious difference I can’t see. I usually get the wife to check the colour part.

I have plenty left on the bine, and want to make sure I pick them at the right time.
 
Lupilin should be a golden yellow, almost orange, not yellow. The outside should be papery and starting to just brown up at the tips.

Picking early and you'll get much less of the aromatic oils and more grassy/vegetal characters.
 
Mat B said:
I’m looking at some of the pics of the hops people have harvested, and I can’t see how they differ to the ones I recently harvested. Mine were deemed to be too young (and smelled that way). I’m looking at them frequently and trying to see if it gets more papery etc.

Can someone please post a pic of what my hops should look like when it’s ready? FWIW I’m growing cascade. I’m also colourblind, so maybe there’s an obvious difference I can’t see. I usually get the wife to check the colour part.

I have plenty left on the bine, and want to make sure I pick them at the right time.
Check out this video Matt B...might help you decide when they are ready.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlsT-x19III
 
Belgrave Brewer said:
Check out this video Matt B...might help you decide when they are ready.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlsT-x19III
Thanks mate
 
That video was a great help to me last season as a first time grower. I have to figure I picked most of them at the right time (the first harvest was probably a bit early) because the resultant beer they were used in was anything but grassy or vegetal, in fact it was delicious. It's probably easier to tell when they're ready by feel rather than what they look like though - I do look for lupulin but I generally wait until they feel dry and papery and make that scrunching paper sound when I squeeze or roll them in my fingers.

Sometimes I'll pick one and crush it up in my hand and smell it, if it smells like the pellets do then I figure it's ready, so I look for other cones that are in the same condition to harvest. It takes me a while to pick them because I inspect and feel each one before I pick it to make sure it's ready.
 
Thanks Rocker1986. That's very helpful! My main issue is I think they already feel papery. It's such a subjective thing.
 
Yeah it can be hard to work out what's papery and what's papery if you get what I mean. Some of the ones on my plant feel papery but I know they're not ready just yet, but probably will be in a week or two. Perhaps take a small section of flowers on the plant and never pick them, but observe them and feel them as they change, that might give you a better idea of when they get to that real dry papery stage.
 
Can anyone provide advice on how long to dry hops before storing/using. My first harvest of the season was 100 g wet, I dried for 4 days (No Heat) on a screen with a final weight of 20 g. Does this dry weight seem right to other growers.

Attached is a pic of the final dried hops.

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PS - Apologies, can't figure out how to rotate an uploaded pic
 
I can't figure out sideways pics either but more importantly, as far as I know you want to dry them to about 25% of their wet weight, so 20g isn't too far from 100g wet.

I'm on a phone so can't see where you're located but in Brisbane I find about 48 hours give or take a few seems to be the sweet spot for drying them to a quarter. That's drying on a screen, no artificial heat or airflow provided.
 
Sideways pics - after you take it, open your editing app/window/etc. Rotate to correct position - even if it's already in the correct position, which it usually is - and re-save. Always comes out right for me then.
 
Also remember if you're going to use them straight away you don't even need to dry them
 
Rocker1986 said:
I can't figure out sideways pics either but more importantly, as far as I know you want to dry them to about 25% of their wet weight, so 20g isn't too far from 100g wet.

I'm on a phone so can't see where you're located but in Brisbane I find about 48 hours give or take a few seems to be the sweet spot for drying them to a quarter. That's drying on a screen, no artificial heat or airflow provided.
Awesome, i am down in melbourne, i will give the next batch a go using 48 hours, worse case i weigh them wet then re-measure after two days. If they are still not at around 25 %, I will put them back on the screen for another day or so.

Cheers,
Schooner
 
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