2015 Hop Harvest
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| Left: Cascade, Right: Goldings |
Another growing season has passed, leading to another hop harvest. In past years I’ve always done a fresh-hop ale; in fact, that is the main reason I grow my own hops as there isn’t really any other way to brew such a beer at the homebrew scale. Unfortunately, life has gotten in the way and a 2015 harvest ale is not on the menu.
We had an odd summer this year, leading to less than ideal growth – after drying I ended up with ~200g (~1/2 lb) of Cascade and a meagre 70g of Goldings. That’s a 30% and near 80% reduction in yield compared to last years harvest. I think my hops get too much sun, but unfortunately, there is little I can do about that.
Anyway’s the hops are dried down, bagged and in the freezer. Hopefully a bitter or brown ale will make the September brew schedule, where the Goldings can shine as a late addition. Given how good it has been the past few years, most – if not all – of the cascade’s are going to make their way into a variation of my Black Mamba Imperial Rye IPA (batch 1, 2).
I really enjoy the unique character you get from the wet hops (although my last couple of batches had too aggressive a malt profile that hid that somewhat). Its a character I've not seen replicated elsewhere.
Bines not lines…
I no longer make wet hopped beers with my homegrown hops. I fill a five gallon bucket with a combination of my four C hops and then give away the lines because I get tired of picking them. I then dry the hops I picked for a week on a screen like you are doing. I then make a 8-10 gallon batch and use the entire dried batch (it works out to be 1-1.25# dried as a flameout addition.
I find I like this method the best.