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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Beer\hops
  • Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:49:27 EDT

In a message dated 4/12/2008 11:10:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
indexer AT localnet.com writes:


> Son trying to get me to grow hops
> for him but obsessive/compulsive as he is about brewing can only tell me
> what sort of hops he wants.
>
> Information seems to vary wildly; do you know where there is reliable
> info about cultivation/yield?
>

SJ, I don't know where there's any *reliable* information, but I've grown
and used hops for years. Hops here are now about 18" tall and hardened off
enough so that frost won't bother them.

Just plant a root cutting, anything over 1" will do, and the vine will spring
from that. You will get a harvest the first year, but a much larger harvest
every year thereafter. The vine will live for more than 50 years. It will
grow very tall if you let it but it can also be trellised like a grape vine.

My estimation is that two vines grown to their potential would give the
homebrewer all the hops he could use for the year. The vines yield a great
deal.

Here's one of my hops vines growing on the gate post of the strawberry bed's
fence:

www.geocities.com/hops.jpg

It has already been picked over twice by the time of this photo. All the
cones ripen at the same time and the picking proceeds from the best to the
rattiest. Some of the cones shown are at the very end of their usefulness.
Soon
they will turn brown and be very hard to harvest because the flowers will
fall
apart when you touch them, although if you DO harvest them, they are
perfectly
good for beer.

The vines die off to the ground in the fall and come out again from the roots
each spring. After the first year you can make cuttings from the original
plant and have all the vines you want.

Brewers will get into knock down drag out fights over varieties. And they do
vary quite a bit. But for the common brewer it's not really all that big a
concern. You hear that this hops is better for flavoring and that one better
for bittering.

You can use the same hops, any hops, for both. The majority of the hops is
put into the wort when it is boiled (also called 'boiling hops') and the
boiling temps release and modify the resins to bitter the beer. When the
wort has
cooled off, a smaller amount is put in and steeped like tea and the resins
released (and modified less) flavor the beer.

In many parts of the country there grows a wild plant related to wormwood and
southernwood called mugwort (artemesia vulgaris) so called because it was
used like hops to flavor beer. It is very bitter and makes a good beer, but
it
doesn't taste like hops.

James </HTML>




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