Grow Your Own Hops

This year I took advantage of the Northern Brewer sale on hop rhizomes and planted some hops. Northern Brewer had a nice selection of hop roots (rhizomes) and the only requirement was that you had to buy at least two. I ordered a cascade rhizome and a fuggle rhizome. Cascade is one of my favorite all-purpose bittering and flavoring hops and fuggle was, well . . . something else. Fuggle is an English flavoring hop and I make English ales from time to time, plus I needed to order a second rhizome and voila, I picked fuggle. Yes, the silly name had something to do with it . . .

So, the rhizomes are shipped to your mailing address about the time your area gets its last frost. Once the last frost is gone, you are supposed to dig two to three foot holes and fill them with a good mixture of well drained soil (I used equal parts top soil, potting soil, and peat moss). You then put the root stock in the ground, vertically, about two inches below the top of the soil. I planted mine in early May and hoped for the best.

Both hop plants have come up fairly well, with the cascade doing a little better than the fuggle (cascade is on the left, fuggle on the right). The first year the plants don't grow to full size or at full speed, as they are establishing their root system. But because they are sending out shoots, I decided to put up my hop trellis last weekend. Hop plants are vines and will grow up to 20 feet up a structure (trellis, tree, house, pole, etc.) in a season, if they are able to. So, you need to create some kind of structure to hold them, or else they don't go anywhere. The higher the better, in general, but the structure has to be able to hold a fair amount of weight, as the hops vines get fairly heavy before they produce their flower cones. You also need to be able to get the hop vines down to the ground in order to pick the flowers, so most designs use string that you can replace every year (the hop plant dies back to its roots every winter).

My trellis is based on my friend Jamie's "ghetto" design. It is not pretty, nor is it extremely tall, but it works well for him and can be easily constructed. The design is basically a 12 foot tall pressure treated 4x4 post, which is then crossed by a 2x4 board on top. I notched the top of my post to provide extra strength and then put screws to hold strings along the cross bar. I sank the post two feet into the ground for extra support and thus it is only 10 feet tall. But it should do for my needs and I can still reach the top on a normal sized ladder (very important because we live on a slope).

Only time will tell how well this experiment will work, but I am excited to potentially brew with my home-grown hops.