I planted my Hallertau and Saaz rhizomes 2 1/2 years ago and since then they've been pretty well neglected. They're growing in my mate Jason's backyard, running along a reinforcing steel tunnel that used to be a hothouse frame. And even though I've neglected them, they've treated me very well. In their first year they didn't do much, last year we were pleasantly surprised to get 440g wet hops from them and today we harvested 2.98kg of wet hops from the Hallertau vine.
The Saaz has always lagged behind the Hallertau and its much smaller crop looks like it needs at least another month to mature.
The Hallertau flowers smell beautifully floral, perfume-like really. The plan is to use some wet hops in a Saison I've got planned for Saturday. The rest are being dried in a dehydrator and I'll vacuum seal them and keep them in the freezer until I'm ready to use them. I'm expecting to have 500-600g of dried hops.
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| Plump hop flowers ready for the picking! |
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| Some of the flowers were pretty huge! |
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| Jason getting a good whiff |
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| Hopppsssssssssssss |
