r/TheHopyard • u/New-Ad-8101 • 7d ago
When to harvest?
First year comet hops! I think they did pretty well for year 1. I am in zone 6a but I am not sure if they are ready yet. They feel mostly papery and the lupin glands are a deeper yellow instead of bright yellow. I was going to dehydrate them and store.
Edit,
I decided to pick them when I got home. I got a pound of cones exactly! They are drying out now and the whole house is smelling like grapefruit. Thank you for the help!
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u/Cfobbie413 5d ago
Commercial hop farmer here, look up how to do at home dry matter tests, they’re simple, only take a few minutes and gives you a pretty accurate harvest window. You’re looking for 20-25% dry matter for most hops.
The hand and smell tests are less reliable but are usually fine if you have know what you’re looking for. Rip the hop open top to bottom down the middle and rub the two haves together in a circular motion to activate the scents in the oil and pollen.
-Underripe green hops will usually smell grassy and kinda like green pepper, when you rub them on your hand they will have very little yellow pollen and won’t be sticky
-perfectly ripe hops will smell variety dependent like floral, pine, citrus and will have yellow pollen leaving your hands sticky
-over ripe hops will get a hemp garlic onion scent and the cones will usually start to bleach from a vibrant green to a dull yellow green to color.
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u/New-Ad-8101 4d ago
Thank you for the notes! I will have to look that up to prepare for year!
From your description I made the right choice. The smell was amazing coming off the hops. Bright grapefruit citrus but also quite dank. Pretty typical it seems for comet. Crushing and rubbing them the lupin was so sticky I had to use dawn platinum and I could still smell it after scrubbing lol.
I think I did miss its peak freshness by a week but the hops were still very wet from 16inches of rain in a week lol.
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u/Cfobbie413 4d ago
Ya that’s tough, rain makes them ripen faster and affects dry matter. Why did you choose comet?
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u/New-Ad-8101 4d ago
Hmm my thinking is that it’s super hardy variety and resistant to a lot of problems. Lantern flys are a real problem in the Midwest right now and the soil in my area is almost straight clay and pools everywhere so I had put it in an oak half barrel. I figured it might do the best with those problems. I did a mix of Foxfarm happy frog/ ocean forest probs 1:3 with 2 bags of perlite. Seemed to work really well.
As for flavor not a lot of people in my area have used it or even know it exists. As a commercial brewer it peaked my interest. I think it could go great in an American lager or brut ipa and I just really like those styles.
It’s also a bit of an experiment for work with the barrels on varieties that could work being in one. We have a back of building beer garden area but the sun bakes the blacktop 90% of the day. Thought maybe the hops could shade it out while providing cool unique beer to the brewery.
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u/Cfobbie413 3d ago edited 3d ago
You should check out the new public variety triumph. 2 of its parents are nugget and brewers gold. It has resistance to Downey and powdery mildew and is a very early hop variety so it may help you be able to harvest before the rains set in, in your area. It’s actually such an early variety no one wants to grow it commercially and that’s why most people haven’t heard of it. The aroma profile is; citrus, peach, bubblegum, pine. It has 9-12% alpha, can be used for dry hopping, whirlpool and bittering.
Also hop roots are massive, I would almost recommend doing them in an even larger container like a 55gal drum or a very deep planter box to let the crown extend wider because in a commercial setting the crown can extend down 12 inches into the soil and the taproots can grow 15ft into the ground and in a container I imagine they get very root bound within 2 years. To be fair tho I have zero experience growing them in containers so take this advice with a grain of salt.
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u/New-Ad-8101 3d ago
That sounds like an awesome hop I will have to check out!
Good idea with the drums. Ibc totes go cheap and could make a giant planter for not much with that.
I think I have watched videos on people who have done barrel planting. They do get root bound pretty bad but if you up your fertilizer it helps with that problem.
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u/TopoftheHops 7d ago
They look pretty ready, I would highly encourage brewing a fresh hop with some & not just dehydrate/store them all. That is the best part of growing your own hops.
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u/New-Ad-8101 7d ago
I agree! Hopefully next year I will have some more time. This year it’s all going into a winter lager!
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u/effervescent_mayhem 7d ago
Roll the cone lightly between your fingers, does it sound like crinkly cellophane? That's my tell, at least.
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u/lupulinchem 7d ago
It sounds like they are ready.