Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

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>