Since I started drinking beer I’ve always been interested in hops. I remember the first time I tasted Timothy Talyor’s Landlord in a beer festival in the Fox & Newt in Leeds. I was 18 and prior to that had liked beer but most of my favourite beers at the time Theaksons’s XB, Castle Eden, Youngers No 3, the pub’s own Old Willow were called a “pint of bitter” but not really that bitter or hoppy. So my first sips of Landlord were a revelation. I did not like it at all it was far too bitter! But I stuck with it and by the last few white foam lines on the pint I loved it. I realised despite it being a beer festival my next pint had to be another Landlord, party because I loved it and party because I knew nothing else would taste of anything after that. Of course these days Landlord is pretty tame compared to the massively hopped 60 IBU+ American style IPAs or even something like Dark Star’s Hophead.

Homebrewing and Hops

So when I started full-mash home brewing in 2005 my focus was on reproducing beers I had in the pub like Landlord. I pretty quickly became fascinated by hops and the flavour they can add to beer. The hops came and still do come dried in the little 100g foil packs from the Home Brew Shop. It took a while to dawn on me but eventually probably encouraged by Brew Your Own magazine I decided I need my own hops and in 2012. I found Willingham Nurseries who shipped me a Fuggle and an East Kent Goldings. You can buy them as Ryzomes which is cheaper but not being that green fingered I went for small plants in the spring . They came through the post and had about 2-3 feet of growth on them up a bamboo cane. I planted them up in the back garden – one near the brew shed and one near a trellis. Even as young plants they grew quite impressively and well off the end of a 6 ft bamboo cane. The next year I added Cascade and Northdown which live in the front garden.

Hop Gardening

The back garden hops now regularly grow 5 or 6 meters as I train them up a string and along the brew shed. They will grow up a vertical string quite easily on their own but if you train them most days they will grow along a sloping or even horizontal string. The front garden hops grow vertically up to a wire suspended from the house at about 4 meters high.

The hops emerge from the ground in April. I have maybe 2 or 3 strings per plant and pick the best looking 2 or 3 shoots to train. The rest get pruned and the tips make a great starter fried in a bit of butter with some pine nuts. During the summer they don’t need much attention just watering if it is dry and of course training if they are not growing vertically. They grow pretty quickly I’ve recorded 5 inches of growth on a shoot in one day when it is sunny.

It is said and I’ve found it broadly to be true that the hop does most of its growing up until the longest day after this it starts throwing side shoots and eventually flowers. Towards the end of the summer I tend to remove the lower leaves and side shoots up to about 6ft – mainly so the rest of the plants around them can get some light but I guess it may also help the plant concentrate on growing the all important flowers.

There is plenty of useful information on Willingham’s Hop Library I found the small scale and organic hop production manual a good introduction – although larger scale than my garden all the principals are the same.

Picking

Hop picking is great fun. First problem is when to pick. I find all the plants seem to be on a different cycle. The ones in the back are south facing so grow and and are ready sooner than the ones in the north facing front, which is also shaded for some of the day. Its typically September and I go by squeezing the cones and waiting for them to be not damp but equally not waiting too long until they have gone brown. You should see and smell the yellow lupulin in the hop flower and I find this gets more intense the longer you dare leave it before harvest. You want the most intense flavour but you don’t want brown hops. For a hophead like me that intense smell when harvesting the flowers is fantastic. Once you’ve chopped down the strings Its pretty manually intensive pulling the individual flowers from the plant to be used or dried.

Drying

I like to use what I can in a green hopped beer but the rest have to be dried for storage. This would be done commercially by heating the hops in a kiln. Not having an oast house at the bottom of the garden I did some googling. There was a lot of talk in the US of taking the mesh window screens they have to stop insects, putting them horizontally, spreading the hops out and blowing air over them. In England we don’t have window screens but I managed to get a “Hanging Dry Rack 6 Tier 900mm Hydroponic Grow Tent Herb Bud Drying Net Carry Bag rack” from eBay that was amongst all hydroponics and strong lights that are used for growing and drying hops wicked cousin.

After harvesting and stripping the flowers off I spread them out in a thinly across as many layers as required of the mesh hanging rack which hangs in the brew shed. I then use a couple of fans to blow air over the hops (one from a fan heater – but with no heat and one larger cooling fan). I run this for about 3-4 days until the flowers are completely dry almost paper like. (but see drying update)

Drying Update

I picked the Fuggles this year in two batches as there were so many on 1st and 6th September. The first batch has not stored well and when I’ve come to use them they are going brown. The second batch of Fuggles, the Northdown and Cascade are fine. I suspect I may have not dried this 1st batch sufficiently or picked them too early. So this is something to watch out for when drying in future – I may give them an extra day or two just to be sure.

Packaging and storage

Ideally I’d like to get a vacuum packaging machine so the hops can be sealed free from air. My current solution is once they are dry to take two handfulls scrunch them down as much as possible and wrap them in aluminium foil. It is important to squash the hops together to exclude as much air as possible. I find I get about 20-30g in one foil wrap. This is also a good size for brewing in a 5 gallon batch. Once wrapped I put them in freezer bags and label them. These are then stored in the brew shed freezer (although due to the fridge part of this fridge-freezer being controlled by BrewPi they get kept cool but are not actually frozen.) They still seem to last OK for me although I know a lot of people freeze their hops to slow any degradation.

Dry Hop Usage

For the last few years I’ve been more or less self sufficient in the hop varieties I grow. With the exception of the one batch this year I’ve found the hops store well. I’ve generally used them within a year although I’ve kept some without problems for 18 months. I find I can use the dried hops like the ones I buy commercially – often mine are fresher than those you can buy in the shop which are often 1 or 2 years harvests ago. When brewing I don’t know the exact alpha acid values for the home grown hops but I’m happy using a typical value for that variety which works fine.

Green Hopped Beers

The idea of making your own beer from your own hops is appealing and I’d read about green hopped beers where the hops are used fresh, so they don’t go through the drying process they just come straight off the plant and into the beer. Now as the hops are growing only feet away from the brew shed getting them there fresh is not an issue. What is interesting is working out how many to use. From what I’d read a multiplier of about 4 or 5 needs to be used, as the dried hops have lost a lot of their weight as the water is removed by the drying. I use the 4-5 times number but this year actually measured the weight of the hops before and after drying and found with my Northdown I had 1.3Kg wet which dried down to 430g which is actually only about 3 times, so maybe I’m over hopping (or under drying).

In previous years I’ve made green hopped beers but only used the green hops for the aroma hops added towards the end of the boil and occasionally for Dry Hopping in secondary (or should that be wet hopping ?) This year due to the abundance of hops I decided to go for it and use green hops for all hopping. I know there are commercial green hopped beers but I’m not sure if anyone goes the whole hog like this for both bittering and aroma hops. So I made two Single Green Hopped beers: Cascade and Fuggles. The amount of hops you throw into the kettle is staggering. Typically with dry hops for a 5 Gallon batch I might be adding a total of 50-100g of hops depending on the hop and the beer style. With green hopping we are looking at 600g of hops!

Green Hop schedule – Century Single Hop – Fuggle

• for a 90 Min Boil for 5 Gallon batch – Green Hops – Fuggle
  • 250g @ 0 Mins
  • 200g @ 80 Mins
  • 150g @ 89 Mins
  • 1 full hop bag of green hops in secondary dry hop

Green Hop Schedule – Century Single Hop – Cascade

• for a 90 Min Boil – or 5 Gallon batch Green Hops – Cascade
  • 250g @ 0 Mins
  • 250g @ 80 Mins
  • 100g @ 89 Mins
  • 1 full hop bag of green hops in secondary dry hop

Both these beers have come out really well. It is hard to define the subtle difference a green hopped beer has. I find a kind of more rounded hop flavour with a fuller mouth feel. Some people say grassy I don’t get that. Its quite subtle but detectable. But the main thing for me is the satisfaction of knowing the provenance of the hops grown organically feet from the brewery and harvested by hand as fresh as as they could possibly be.

In a chance meeting at the Wandsworth Common beer festival I was speaking to Paddy – head brewer at Windsor and Eton Brewery and he was very sceptical about dry hopping with my own green hops – as they would not be sterile. The hops in the kettle obviously get hot enough to kill anything that may be living on them. Putting the green undried hops into the beer during secondary is a risk – compared to the kilned pellets he would use. However I’ve done this for a few years now and not had any problems – but then if there is a problem I only have 5 gallons to throw away not 20 odd barrels so I can understand his concern. Being able to experiment with hops like this is one of the luxuries of homebrewing.

It has been incredibly rewarding getting to know these amazing plants that give us the bitterness and hoppy flavours in beer and I look forward each year to watching the hops grow, brewing and drinking the green hopped beers in September and brewing with home grown hops year round.