The 2012 hop harvest was a great success for The Root Cellars Garden. Using the same three plants as last year, we were able to increase our wet yield from about 10 pounds to 23.8 pounds and after removing the obligatory 12 ounces of hops to create our fresh hop beer, we ended up with 100.2 dried ounces of hops. This is as compared to the 36 ounces last year! The yield increase is likely due to the age of our rhizomes. They are coming into full maturity and producing peak yields. We were also very attentive to watering during the very dry July/August that we had to ensure the cones would fully mature and produce the amount of lupulin we were hoping for before starting to dry out.
Needless to say, hubs is going to be busy during the next year! As in year’s past we harvested Cascade, Centennial and Mt Hood hops. We picked them, laid them out to dry, turned them every day, and when papery, measured them out and used a Food Saver to package them. After which, they went directly into the freezer. The only difference this year was that hubs wanted to package all of the hops into 2 ounce packs, this was a welcome request given the sheer number of packs we were going to make!
Centennial bines ready for harvest.
Centennial cones.
Mt Hood cones.
Mt Hoods in buckets.
Yard dog helping out with the harvest.
Centennial and Mt Hood harvest, 21.3 pounds!
Our king cone, a Centennial. There may have been bigger ones, but this cone got the prize!
Packing hops for freezing. 100.2 ounces total into the freezer!
We have far exceeded our goal of growing enough hops for a single year of home brewing. Hubs would like to add one or two more varieties of hops to our garden to give him more variety for brewing, but at this point, he is going to have to find a bigger freezer before he can to that!
Love!
Hubster and I have been wanting to brew our own beer, there’s even a free class offered locally. But growing our own hops?! Oh Becky, you’ve given me some great inspiration! :)