Hops update

The last hops entry was about my latest experimental growing scheme and detailed my inability to detach the line to let the hop vines down for picking.

That has continued with the 2017 harvest, but I've learned to use a tree branch trimmer extension to cut the vines down in stages from a ladder. Dangerous, but effective (until we find a solution to the detachment problem). 

But one thing that I learned years ago is that the best way to harvest hops is always with a bunch of friends (and nosy neighborhood kids) and this year was no different.  

This 2017 year's hops crop was donated to an aspiring kombucha startup named Motherlode that a friend of mine is starting. Just last week I got to taste the fruits of her labor and it was great! Small disclaimer that I had never had kombucha before this and that all of the flavors were still awesome. I wish her the best success and she can have all the hops she can pick from my lines next year (especially since we got tired and didn't do a thorough job this year, lol). Cheers!

Results from the 2015 hop experiment

As predicted, my hop vines easily cleared the top of each of their respective lines by mid-summer. Even the Super Alpha made it to the top after the initial damage was done. After each reached the top of their lines they began to really fill out and beef up to the point where the taught steel cable began to bow (more on this in a second).











Here is an artsy picture of the Super Alpha as it's just making it to the top of it's line and reaching out to find more room to grow.













Each vine had a lot farther to climb than the amount of line and space that I gave them this year. From my standpoint it was much easier to just let them run wild and grow on their own up their lines than to train them weekly back to their horizontal canopy line like last year. Even though this probably limits their potential for growth and yield a bit, I'll probably continue to do it this way in the future as long as I can figure out a way around the big problem that I ran into with harvesting them.

My whole scheme of growing the hops this way (up the lines to the steel cable) had unknowingly relied on the assumption that come harvest time that I'd be strong enough to detach the main carabiner, which connected the steel cable to the building next to the second story window, and then could lower the steel cable to the ground for harvesting of the vines. As I noted above, my vines gained some substantial mass as they climbed and filled out with fresh hops to pick. The weight of the vines made even budging the main carabiner from the eye screw that held it to the building all but impossible.  

The result of my inability to detach the min carabiner was that I was forced to improvise to bring the hop vines down. Initially I thought I could lighten the vine load enough just by cutting the bottom half of the vines down, and then still continue to move forward with my original plan of detaching the main carabiner.





So now that I had my 6 vines dangling in the wind (and scooting towards the middle of the bowed cable) I tried the main carabiner once more with similar results of barely making it budge from the eye screw. As you can see the sun was beginning to set after a long day of trying to harvest, so I admitted defeat and slept on finding a solution that would enable me to harvest the majority of my hop bounty that still remained stranded in midair.

Well they say that you can't rush a good idea, and I couldn't figure out a way to even get them down for a few days(let alone harvest them), so the rest of my hops literally died on the vine to the point that they weren't worth harvesting any more. But I still had to get them down somehow...

So I borrowed my dad's tree branch cutting saw on a stick and hacked them down in vengeance/defeat. So many hops wasted.

But on the bright side I can show you how it was supposed to work with letting down the main steel cable for harvesting.

And of course all was not lost since I harvested the bottom third of the vines.As you can see the Super Alpha on the right had the worst yield and some of them were starting to brown since I waited to harvest them until late September. I've given them to my friends at Urban Artifact for a brewing of their choice and hopefully we'll sell the beer for some sort of fundraiser for Tender Mercies. That's the plan right now anyways.

Better luck next year and I've got a new to come up with a better plan for letting down the steel cable. If you have a better idea let me know.

Early summer hop report

It's been a while since I've checked in on my hops, and frankly I had almost just let them run wild until a few weeks ago. But as I looked out the window and saw them approaching the top of the 8 foot fence before it was even June, it became clear that I needed to give them some more room to run if they were going to have as good a showing as last year (or hopefully better after a year to build-out their roots). 

Instead of going across the lot canopy-style like I did last summer, I've tried a more traditional route of continuing to grow them upwards. I've strung a steel cable between a telephone pole and anchored it to my building. There are removable carabiners at each end of the cable, so that I'll be able to take them down for harvest. The one anchored to my building is accessible from my second story window, so I'm able to attach 6 other carabiners with polypropylene twine tails and then slide them across the cable before securing them to the fence. The polypropylene twine is rough enough that the hops can climb it, but strong enough against the elements that I'm hoping it doesn't decompose and break like the cheap twine from last year started to do. 

From right to left the varieties are Crystal, Horizon, Newport, Saaz, Santiam, and Super Alpha. While Super Alpha was one of the strongest last year, this year it hasn't fared as well; due to a combination of kids stomping all the plants early in the spring, then my lower fence pallet falling off and crushing it, and then as I discovered yesterday it appears that some animal has been eating/digging at the roots. There's still a couple shoots surviving and plenty of time to grow left this summer, so I'm hopeful that it'll come back still. Really all except Newport are still showing signs of the kids stomping them, as they all have re-corrected upwards after being pulled to the right. Because of this lean and early damage, I really haven't pruned back the small shoots like I did last season to let the bigger ones take over an flourish. I've got a feeling that they'll all hit the top of my twine by mid-summer pretty easily. Most major hop growers make their lines 30-40 feet high and mine is probably closer to 20 feet at this point. 

Barley wine bottled

Fridge is fully stocked with the remaining barley wine (and one old growler of the steam beer). I'm letting it age a little bit before drinking since the flavors are supposed to continue to change and get better. Still waiting on the rest of the steam beer to get bottled. Cheers!

[PS: I cook a lot, SIKE]

Beer's here

So the long awaited day came just after Christmas Day when I picked up 4 growlers of the beer brewed with my backyard hops. They produced 2 half kegs of beer with my yield with one being a barelywine and the other being a dark steam beer. Both are delicious and went over exceptionally well with both sides of my family and my friends. I've still got some left from the growlers, but they'll be bottling the rest for me so that it last longer. Hit me up if you want a try. 

Brewing time

So again here's the full harvest from my first year of growing hops on 6 vines (one each of Crystal, Horizon, Newport, Saaz, Santiam, and Super Alpha). 

Per my brewer, I had 6.5 oz of dried Saaz and 6.95 lbs of the rest of my hops. He's using the Saaz to make a dark steam beer and the others to make a copper colored barley wine. As you see from the pictures, there were so many hops in the barley wine that the stirring spoon stood straight up on it's own.

We should be drinking the fruits of our labor sometime near Christmas, but until the next post it'll be fermenting away.

Hops report on the harvest season

Well time sure flew by as my hops shot up their lines, flowered, got picked, dried, and taken to the brewery. It looks like I need to catch up from all the way back in June!

This is going to be a lot of pictures, but it's everything I've got since mid-June.

By the end of July the vines were getting really long and weighing down the lines. I'll need to double up the lines next year for strength.

Here are some of the first flowers by mid-August on I think the Saaz

By the end of August there were plenty to pick so I had a hop harvest cookout over Labor Day weekend. I'm really glad that so many people came out and hopefully this is something that I'll do again multiple times next year.

Here's the yield of the first harvest

Then I put them on cookie sheets and baked them on the lowest temperature that my oven would go. I opened the door every once in a while to let the moisture escape as well.

Another harvest yield

And another harvest yield. I don't think that I took pictures after all of them, but the hops just kept producing again and again.

Here is everything that I got out of my 6 vines in the first year.