Homegrown Hops

In April, I planted four hop rhizomes in my parents' garden. I had been wanting to plant hops for a while, and since I don't have my own place with a garden my parents' place seemed logical. Here's a rough accounting of what happened.

I planted two Cascade plants, which almost certainly did not get enough sun as they did not grow very tall or fast and only produced a handful of small hop cones. However the cones did smell pretty good. Both of these plants grew up twine which was attached to screws in the side of the house.

Also I had two Centennial plants, one of which did not have enough sun as it was against the same wall as the Cascades and produced a lot of pale green-yellow leaves and only a few cones. The other one grew very well, at least in comparison to the other 3 plants. This one had much more sun and a large trellis built out of PVC pipe to support its growth. It produced a large volume of dark green leaves and about 1lb, 2oz of wet cones, though the cones were small and do not have a huge hop aroma. (Perhaps I picked them too soon.)

So lessons learned from the growing experience.

• Put the hops in a place where they have as much sun as possible. I have a plan for moving things around next year so they get better sun.
• If you plant them in containers, use a very large pot.
• Hops will grow vertically and produce many leaves if they are healthy. Make sure your trellis or twine is well-secured against the wind.
• Have some way to either lower the top of the plant down for picking, or a tall ladder so that you can reach the top. 
• Picking takes time. It took me a hour to pick the hops off of the big plant.
• Learn to pick the hops at the right time- not when the are too underdeveloped but not after they have dried out on the plant. I wish I had looked at some YouTube videos for this.

Once I picked the hops, I placed them in brown paper bags for drying. A few days later they seemed dry, though I don't really know if I am doing this right. Unfortunately they do not smell like the hops I buy from the store. They kind of smell .... grassy or stale or something. But they definitely have some bitterness in the core as I can see, taste and smell the yellowish-green lupulin when cone is cut open.

The yield from the Centennial was a total of 7oz dry hops, and about 3/8oz dry hops from the Cascade. So, the Centennial lost about 1/2 of their weight when drying.

I am pretty hesitant to brew a beer with these things. First, I have heard that first year hops do not tend to be good for beer as the plants have spent their energy developing the root system rather than the lupulin and such. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, my hops just don't smell great. If they don't smell good on their own, how could they smell good in my beer?

My expectations for the first year of growth were not high. But it was for sure a learning experience and I am positive that I can change things up a bit so that next year I get more hops and better quality hops. Picking them at the wrong time may have been the reason for the poor smell.