First of all thanks to Bryan over at TBL for suggesting this topic.The bines are growing as are your visions of the hops harvest. You might even be planning ahead wondering about how you are going to dry all those hops so you can store them? I guess it depends on how much you have. During last year's harvest we picked about five pounds of green hop flowers (less than two five gallon buckets) that yielded 21 oz. of dried hop flowers. Keep in mind these were second season Cascade plants. I'm expecting more this year. I'll probably stick to my usual method of putting them near a dehumidifier in the basement on screens.
I'm not an expert, nor do I think you need to be. There are a variety of ways to dry hops. I have heard of these methods.
- food dehydrator - usually small amounts due to the small size of these devices
- oven - a step up from a dehydrator, not sure how well this works
- lay the hop flowers on screens in a very warm and dry area like attic or near a dehumidifier with a fan to move the air
- build your own hops dryer out of some wood and screen (usually stacked trays)
- hang whole bines in the attic
Basically you need a few things to be successful.
- large enough area for your harvested flowers
- heat
- airflow (fan or natural air currents from the heat)
- low humidity
- ability to move the hops flowers around a bit to ensure they dry evenly
I found that after a day or two in my basement with the dehumidifier running the hops were ready to be packaged and stored. I use the vacume seal food saver bags (Amazon Link
Prost!
Hops Drier
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