growing hops?

[Weird Jimmy]

Anyone have any experience with growing hop vines? I'm thinking about growing a few rhizomes this summer, but I'm not really sure what sort of a garden set up I need. I know they get huge and heavy and they need support, so I'm curious to hear how others have done it. I've done a little research on the net, but it's always better to have an active forum.

p.s., There has been a world wide hops shortage over the past few years and prices have gone way up, making our beer prices go way up right along with it. This is especially a problem for me as I only drink extremely hoppy brews. For anyone who loves their craft brews and also loves gardening, then grow hops!!! Help put lower priced hops back into the hands of the people who make magic with them.

 

[fishheadbob]

I bought 2 vines from some mail order nursery many years ago. I just stuck them along the foundation . One never took, the other one took over. It ran 20 feet up the siding of the house; I'd guess it covered 200 square feet of the house, and it was indestructible. I'd cut it down to ground level every few years and try to dig it out, bathe it in weed killers which it really seemed to like. A real nuisance plant in my case, but anything viney grows very well here. It was a great yielding plant, but the only brewer I knew wanted maybe a small paper bag's worth of hops, and didn't like the taste of whatever variety I had. So I wound up introducing the vine to Roundup which did kill it.

 

[eugenegreen]

Anyone have any experience with growing hop vines? I'm thinking about growing a few rhizomes this summer, but I'm not really sure what sort of a garden set up I need. I know they get huge and heavy and they need support, so I'm curious to hear how others have done it. I've done a little research on the net, but it's always better to have an active forum.

p.s., There has been a world wide hops shortage over the past few years and prices have gone way up, making our beer prices go way up right along with it. This is especially a problem for me as I only drink extremely hoppy brews. For anyone who loves their craft brews and also loves gardening, then grow hops!!! Help put lower priced hops back into the hands of the people who make magic with them.

I LOVE me some IPA! Hell it's the only type of beer I'll drink... The real hop monsters!!!!

But I can't brew worth shit !
I just can't keep shit sterile enough it seems to make good beer...
I gotta friend here who does though.. Brews great beer actually!
The sign of a good brewer is someone who can make a good Mead, in my very humble opinion, and the first homebrew my friend sent me (MANY years ago!) was a Mead . I'm sure the brewing skills have just gotten better since then!

I'll drop a line and see if my friend can drop in here to help you out... Oh, and this cat knows a thing or two about hops

 

[Weird Jimmy]

awesome Eugene, thanks... and I'm right there with you on only drinking IPA's, everything else just tastes like swill.

here's a pic I just took of a beer that you need to try. This shit is my holy grail of brew and I've tried a SHIT load of IPA's. The g13haze is optional....

 

[the_man]

Really all you need is full sun, 16-25 foot trellis, some rope and training the bines up the rope, Drying is done the some way as MJ. Be forwarned hops roots are very large so pick a good spot for them..

 

[fart star]

like the man says they love full sun and will be over come with powdery mildew if it gets wet in the late summer. Theyre the closet relative to cannabis, some people have tried to graft them together. They also make a good cover for outdoor mj. I've even heard of people adding the cones to chicken feed to help keep the chicks healthy due to some kind of anti-microbial activity. I've never tried it though.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

i tried grafting some cannabis onto hops a few times and have yet to succeed

i have some cascade, some fuggle and some nugget hops, also an ornamental variety 'aureus' which i gave some of the cones to my friend and he reported that they were like cascades. the vine looks crazy, looks cholorphyll deficient but thats just how it grows

i dont brew myself, but i love to grow plants so i grow the hops and my friend who is a good brewer makes the brews
works for me

 

[Bacchus]

I have been growing hops for about 6 years now. They are a breeze to grow in my climate, here in Oregon.







They can easily overtake any garden if not aggressively cut back in the Spring( as fishheadbob says LOL) These are all Mt.Hood hops. I will be adding some Cascades this Spring.

I run 8 strings up to the top of the chimney in the Spring for support. It is about 25' to the top of the roof. Hardy tough plants. You might not get much the first year but the next you will and after the 3rd year you will be trying to contain them

What part of the country are you in Jimmy?

 

[fishheadbob]

I have been growing hops for about 6 years now. They are a breeze to grow in my climate, here in Oregon.

What part of the country are you in Jimmy?

So I'm obviously not Jimmy, but mine grew better than weeds in cold, snowy, upstate New York.

 

[Bacchus]

Awesome fishhead... what varieties are you growing? If I remember reading right, New York was a leader in Hop production during the last century. Some blight mucked them up.

I tried growing hops in Houston a long time ago. The high humidity was not good for them.

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

Anyone have any experience with growing hop vines? I'm thinking about growing a few rhizomes this summer, but I'm not really sure what sort of a garden set up I need. I know they get huge and heavy and they need support, so I'm curious to hear how others have done it. I've done a little research on the net, but it's always better to have an active forum.

p.s., There has been a world wide hops shortage over the past few years and prices have gone way up, making our beer prices go way up right along with it. This is especially a problem for me as I only drink extremely hoppy brews. For anyone who loves their craft brews and also loves gardening, then grow hops!!! Help put lower priced hops back into the hands of the people who make magic with them.

I planted 5 rhizomes about 10 years ago at the bottom of my balcony. It goes up about 15 feet to the hand rail. For the past 7 years or so, the hops have come up over the top of the handrail and done their best to take over my little balcony. I'm going to put a couple masts in the corner of my balcony and put some mesh up and have them go straight up giving me about 25 feet up from ground. This past year, I got about 3 pounds off my vines, and that was doing absolutely nothing (other than some nute run off from my 'other hops') to help them along. I really should do something about an anual infestation of some sort of little green worm that just loves the hop leaves.. they seem to leave the buds alone tho. Just fyi, the hop shortage is over, but the prices will never come back down to what they used to be. I'm paying 25 buks a pound now for what I was paying 8 and 9 buks for 5 years ago. 2 years ago, they were about 50 buks a pound at my purchasing level. If you really like beer, you should look into brewing. I have been brewing for about 17 years and make way better beer than you can buy (and for a lot less money). I brewed a 15 gallon batch of IPA right before the Holidays that had over 50 buks worth of hops in the batch. This is a good time of year to get rhizomes. You can order them thru http://morebeer.com/search/103741

A popular variety to grow is Cascades. Basically, anything that starts with 'C' i.e. Cascade, Chinook, Challenger, Centennial and a few others are popular with home brewers. You'll have fun no matter which one you choose. Have fun!

mgk

 

[Weird Jimmy]

I'm in the Great Lakes. Thinking about growing centennial because I love the beers they can produce.

And I'd love to start brewing. I will someday. I have lots of hobbies though, and I know how expensive hobbies are to start. I'll stick to gardening the hops for now and pass them on to the real brewers.

 

[Sheriff Bart]

Im near the great lakes myself, USDA zone 3b/4a
i've found that the varieties I have are hardy, at least i know the cascade, fuggle and aureus are. I got the nugget off a RH Schumway rootstock i think and i didnt get any of the root stock, so im hoping its hardy here will find out.

as you can tell by what people have posted, they can eventually get to be very large vines. for production, you want to train them up trellis' to get big main producing vines and cut crazy little offshoots that wont be productive. its a lot like the cannabis in that sense, and its a heavily cultivated crop and requires some amount of tending in order to get good production and not wild growth (not to mention the genus Humulus is in the same family as Cannabis, the Cannabacaea family), because they can and well grow very wildly and prolifically if not taken care of or given enough space to grow. that is if you want to actaully produce hops. i dont bother, thats a shitload of work and i've too many other plants to take care of so i basically just help the initial vines grow where i want and then if i see suckers coming up from the base and crawling on the ground or growin off in other directions i prune those off. depending on the size of plant you start off with, it will take prob 3-5yrs to get fully established and then it will go insane from them.

what bacchus has is great for home production, if you are lucky to have a southern exposure like that with a chimney or brick for the vine to climb up. then just tear it all down in the fall and pick off the cones and no worries about gettin on a ladder (except maybe to help remove it if they are really well attached)
otherwise just build a study trellis. and i mean sturdy, esp if you make it tall, otherwise you can train the plants to grow more horizontally rather than vertically like along a 6-7" fence or something.


i got these in the ground last year:
my cascade and fuggle varieties

aureus variety: at a public trial and display garden i worked at over the summer

just like Cannabis pistils....

developed cones

 

[pangolin]

Nice

 

[the_man]

everything you want to know about hops

The manual

http://www.crannogales.com/HopsManual.pdf