Storing hops

 

 Kinda looks like a drug bust in here. My hop plants in my back yard really didn’t amount to much, 3 oz. of fuggles and 4.5 oz. of Brewers Gold. They definitely need bigger pots but I would rather find a spot in the ground somewhere. The two stacks on the right are the River road hops. I have 17 oz. of those ones and you can tell I finally got the hang of my new vacuum sealer. I picked it up at Walmart for about $100. There are cheaper ones and there are more expensive ones but this brand has a lot of good reviews and I didn’t want to go over $100.  Even though I don’t have anything to compare it with, having never used one of these things it certainly did the job and it’s easy to use. The suctioning took about 15 seconds for a one ounce bag and it flattened it to less than a quarter of an inch. The trick is to flatten it with your hands a little as the suctioning is happening otherwise your package ends up in a crinkly ball which will take up more space in your freezer. Also you have to be careful of the stems which can poke through the plastic and allow air in. I think it was a good investment and I’ll use it for other things as well. There’s no way I could have stored all those hops in our small freezer without it. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for this brand ( I’m not receiving any money from this company) but more for vacuum sealers in general as a great way to store hops. Cheers and happy brewing!

 

 

Hop Heaven

It was literally raining hops all around me, they were bouncing off my head as I was grabbing them off the vine by the handful. A cloud of lupulin dust could be seen floating in the air and the smell of hops was intoxicating. I was in hop heaven but this was not a dream, it actually happened! I just wish I had more time to show this in the video. There were sooo many hops at this site. I’m not sure what variety they are, could be B.C. Goldings or any number of varieties that were grown here in the Fraser Valley. This area once had a thriving hop industry that started in the 1890’s and continued up until the mid 1990’s. So if you see hops growing at the side of the road beside a farm they could be remnants of a hop yard. Tonight I think I’ll pick up a vacuum sealer to package these up once they’re dry.

 

Hop Day 2014

There’s nothing like the smell of fresh hops, I wish I owned a hop farm. Until that happens I’ll just have to be happy growing them in pots in my backyard. This years crop was pretty good, I got about three times more Fuggle hops and my first year Cascade even produced a couple handfuls. Unfortunately my hop cones were rather small this year, my guess is that I need bigger pots, anyone else experience small hop syndrome?

Brewers Gold, some of it is on the other side of the fence.

Here’s my Fuggles with the new Cascade vine on the right.