Everywhere around here the hops are starting to look like they are almost ready to go.
That means people who just started with them are probably wondering what to do with them.
Other than fresh hopping,,or using the hops soon after picking,, you will need a way to store them. And I’m not gonna lie.. it’s very labor intensive on our scale.
First thing though is to make sure they are ready to be picked.
Alot of people pick them waaay to early. If they are still that very light green and the inner parts of the cone are white, they are not ready.
What you want is for them to be that darker green nearly all the way through and the yellow lupalin sacks starting to dry slightly.
Even yellow edges of the hops ain’t too bad.. but should be getting to them as soon as possible by then.
Child labor does help quite a bit here during the speed round of picking.
Once picked you can use them as is right now for fresh hopped beer. Use them at the end of the boil to get the most aromas and taste out of them.
Saving them.
You cannot just put them in a bag and freeze them. Hops are nearly all water, so when you thaw that bag of hops, all your gonna find is a bag of snot and all your time has been wasted.
You need to dry them. Techniques on drying hops could be a week long series.. but for now, if your new to it, one of the best ways to dry them is just lay them out in a single layer on a screen or cloth and put them in a warmer garage with fans blowing over them to keep the air flowing.
Air movement and single layer is key. Even just keeping a bunch of them in a paper bag over night will let them start to compost and cook themselves. You dont want that.
Now you don’t wanna over dry them either or they will turn into dust when you touch them. Your looking for dry.. but not dried out. I think the standard is like 80% by weight. It’s hard to weight this stuff,,so I usually just eyeball it to where they still hold shape of come,, but are close to being crispy.
Now you can pack them in freezer bags and get them froze. They will last for a few months this way with out losing much punch.. but you probably would wanna use them sooner or later.
Either way you use them you want to use the brewing mesh bags.
These keep the full cone leaflets from clogging syphons or drain valves, plus far easier to keep out of the fermenter.
A word of note when using your homegrown hops. As mentioned up there before, they are mostly water. So using fresh will generally add some volume to your batch. Hard to tell how much,, but keep that in mind.
And using the dried whole ones? They soak up ALOT of your wort. Be prepared.
Hops are a lot of work,, but it is kind cool using your own homegrown ones.
Keep notes on volumes and taste profiles because they do change alot year to year.
Remember, you can still get years of my old content at
9stripe Brewing 