Enjoy your home grown hops following these easy step by step instructions on how to grow hops. Clear instructions for finding good female roots, to planting, cultivating, harvesting and using your home grown hops.
Make sure you grow female hops!
The biggest challenge may be finding a source of organic hop rhizomes of the preferred varieties. Local brewing clubs may know of a source. A company that offers female hop rhizomes on the Internet is Brew Organic, of Santa Cruz, California
Hops are vegetatively propagated from root cuttings.
There are both male and female plants but only female flowers are used in brewing.
Hop seeds are a problem for brewers, so make sure to obtain only female rhizomes for planting.
Where can you grow hops
Hops can be planted almost anywhere where there are 4 months or 120 frost-free days to produce fully-ripe flowers.
Urban growers need to make sure their hops are not close by a strong 24-hour light source, as this will prevent flowering.
If drainage is a problem, you may need to build mounds using the surrounding topsoil mixed with organic matter.
Under good conditions, you now have a rhizome that will produce 1 kg or 2 pounds of hops per vine.
5 steps for planting hops
The hop of commerce is the female flower, commonly called a cone. Hops are produced on climbing vines from female rhizomes planted one to a hill, with four to six vines per plant.
Keep rhizomes refrigerated until the soil is ready for planting. Do not let rhizomes get completely dry, and do not keep them too wet. To keep rhizomes moist, mist them regularly.
Hops are planted at about the same time as early peas and can tolerate freezing weather.
- Plant hop rhizomes in early spring once the soil is workable. Hops survive a frost as long as the ground doesn’t freeze solid. Ideally, your hop vines should break ground with the first spring flowers.
- Choose a good location for growing the hops. Hops prefer a southern exposure, with as much sunlight as possible. Hops thrive in light-textured, well-drained soil with a pH of 6.0-8.0.
- Dig a hole about 30cm – one foot deep. To fertilize, mix the soil with manure and other slow release organic fertilizers such as cottonseed meal, bone meal or rock phosphate. Return the fertilized soil to the hole.
- Plant the rhizome horizontally about 1-inch below the surface of the soil. Or plant the rhizomes vertically with the buds pointing up.
- Separate different hop varieties by 1.5 m – 5 feet to prevent tangling. You can plant hops of the same variety as close as 1m – 3 feet.
Preventing your hops from diseases
Many growers of hops experience difficulties with fungal diseases : downy mildew and Verticillium wilt. As with grapes, this can be kept in check with sulfur-based fungicides.
Monitor your hop plants regularly all season long. Cut off any infected parts, and place the cuttings in a tightly closed plastic bag for off-site disposal. Do not use for compose!
Prune off the lower 50cm- 2 feet of leaves to impede mildew infections by improving ventilation near the soil.
Wide spacing of the hop hills also reduces the chances of serious infection, because the better ventilation reduces humidity levels in the immediate plant environment.
Aphids and mites
Aphids are probably the most common insect pest. These are usually controlled by natural predators, but if aphids get out of hand, the population can be set back with an insecticidal soap spray.
Applications of neem will also control aphids, as well as spider mites.
Mites may be a problem, especially in hot, dry weather. There are some natural enemies of mites, but the most effective non-chemical control is a good cold rain or a heavy hosing with cold water.
Adequate irrigation in dry periods will also reduce mite damage by decreasing water stress on the plants.
Which and how many hops do you need to plant?
To produce hops in the proportions common for brewing beer, hop growers should plan on growing:
- roughly twice as many hills of aromatic hops (3 to 5% bitterness)
- compared to bittering hops (above 11% bitterness).
We repeat that when planting hops, you need to make sure to leave enough space between varieties so that it is easy to keep the different types of hops separate at harvest.
About four hills (plants, rhizomes) of aromatic hops and two hills of bittering hops are needed for every hundred gallons of beer.
Each of the four to six vines arising from a hill produces about 150 g or 4 to 6 ounces of dried hops.
Growing hops for the first year
First year hops have a minimal root system. Therefore you need to make sure that the soil never remains dry for prolonged periods:
- frequent, short watering is best or
- mulch the soil surface with organic matter to conserve moisture (and control weeds for free).
When the hop vines grow 30 cm – 1 foot long: select the heartiest 2-3 vines and wrap them clockwise around a trellis or support.
Prune all subsequent vines from the base of the hop.
How to support your hops
For the first year, the support system can be a thin 2.5m -8 foot stake.
In subsequent years, you will need a taller support system:
- commercial trellis are 6m - 18 feet tall.
- home growers can use shorter trellis of 3-4m 10-12 feet.
- home growers can also drop twine from a tree, pole, or house roof. Ensure the twine is taut and strong, as mature hop vines are quite heavy.
Vines are trained on almost vertical strings to a flat overhead trellis.
Trellis pole supports need to be at least 4m – 12 feet above the ground and no more than 8m – 25 feet apart.
Hop hills should be about 60cm – 2 feet apart, allowing 10 hills (of the same variety) per set of poles.
Careful choice of location of the hops vineyard will shelter vines from prevailing winds.
Fertilizing hops
Hops can generally be well nourished with abundant applications of composted manure, accompanied by roughly one handful each of bone-meal and wood ash per hill.
Unlike many crops, hops tend to produce better in soil with a relatively high proportion of phosphorus and potassium to nitrogen. This means that boosting nitrogen fertility does not tend to increase yields.
Hops respond well to small amounts of boron—a small pinch of borax per hill should be enough.
How to grow hops older than 1 year
Hops will die back to the permanent root stock (crown) each fall.
The crown is hearty, and relatively unaffected by even the deepest winter freeze.
Hop vines break ground at about the same time the earliest spring flowers appear. Hops grow back much stronger after they have developed a good root system.
Prune the earliest hop shoots back to the ground to encourage a heartier second growth.
Harvesting and drying hops
Hops should be harvested before the first frost. The actual date will vary depending on your location, but mid-August to mid-September is most common.
Hops are ready to harvest when the aroma is strongest. Test the aroma by smelling a crushed hop cone.
As you squeeze a mature hop between your fingers, you should notice a yellow powder from the lupulin glands. Ripe cones will feel dry and papery. With some varieties the color will be lighter. Slight browning of the lower bracts of the cone is normal, and a good sign of maturity.
Lower the hop vine to the ground to begin the harvest. Pick only the cones, not the leaf material.
Dry hops before usage or storage. In dry weather, air-drying is preferable:
- Spread them shallowly onto a window screen, and keep them out of direct sunlight.
- Every day you should “fluff” the hops to bring moist hops to the outside of the pile.
- The hops are dry when the inner stem of the hops is brittle. It should break rather than bend.
You can also dry hops with a food dehydrator or in the oven. Make sure to keep the temperature under 60 degrees C – 140 degrees F.
Store hops away from oxygen.
Most home growers don’t have access to oxygen-barrier bags and vacuum sealers, so your best compromise is to pack as many hops as possible into a ziplock-style freezer bag. Squeeze them tight to remove as much air as possible and seal the bag.
Store hops frozen until used.
How to use hops
Homegrown hops are typically used for aroma, flavor or dry hopping.
Since precise alpha acids are not known, it is a challenge to use them for bittering. A few test batches may be necessary to get the feel for the potency of the hop.
Use homegrown hops in the same quantity (by weight) as commercial hops. Leaf hop utilization is about 15% less than pellets.
How to grow hops summarized
- growing hops requires lots of sun, sandy soil and room to grow vertical
- rhizomes can be bought or acquired from other hop growers
- plant hops in spring when ground is no more frozen
- always make sure that when you are growing hops, they have enough water
- wait for the bines to come up and train them on something to get them off the ground
- pick hops when they are ready to harvest in the late summer or early fall (usually you won’t be able to harvest much hops in your first year)
- cut hops back for next year.
Please leave a comment if you have more tips or better techniques on how to grow hops!
