Homegrown Hops

Grow It Yourself

Hops are expensive, for homebrewers 100g of dried hops can cost anything up to £6+ a pack. This makes brewing super hoppy American style pale ales quite an expensive process. So in my never-ending quest to spend less money I bought and planted two hop plants (Prima Donna or First Gold variety) early last year. After 3-4 weeks of nothing happening there was a sudden burst of activity, several shoots appeared from the ground and rapidly scaled the fence. The blurb which came with the plants warned me to expect very little in the first year, which was fortunate as very little was precisely what I got. It is not until the third year that the plant will reach its full potential so I was not expecting much extra this year. Once again in early March several shoots appeared and grew rapidly up and along my fence, however this year I picked over 1.6kg of fresh hops which I dried in a food dehyrator down to a dry weight of 350g.

The hop fence

There's something quite satisfying about growing your own hops for brewing although given that the hop plants cost £18 I'm still out of pocket as 350g of First Gold only costs about £14. Next year I should get a bigger harvest and I can also split the hop rhizomes to get more plants, so over time I should save a bit of money. I also found hops growing wild near me last year so in early March I dug up some rhizomes and planted cuttings in my garden. I don't know the variety but they do smell great, were free and for a first year's crop I've done pretty well, far better than last year's bought plants. These hops aren't quite ready to pick yet but when they are I'll brew a green hop beer.

Wild Hops

Last year I dried my meagre harvest on the window sill, but this took too long and the end result was poor. This year I have used a food dehydrator which has given great results. I dried 500g of fresh hops down to 110g in 10-12 hours, with the dehydrator at the lowest heat setting of 35°C. Higher temperatures than this risk burning off the much sought-after but volatile hop oils.

Food Dehydrator

My total harvest was just over 2kg (1.65kg First Gold and 400g of the wild variety) which I dried down to 450g and froze for future brewdays.
In conclusion I have to say that growing hops is very straightforward, they require very little special care and hopefully I'll get to brew some great beer.