Deciding what rhizomes to plant

This year, I have the benefit of having a homebrew shop located close to my home that will have plenty of varities of hops in stock.

American Brewmaster is a shop in Raleigh, NC that has anything and everything the homebrewer would ever need. They are currently taking orders for rhizomes and they should be in sometime around the end of March.

Last year, I had a lot of success with the Magnum variety - they had a high yield, they grew great in the northern climate and they were very resistant to disease.

Now that I'm living in a different area, I need to do some research and find out which variety will fare best in the southern climate. Summers here are hot and humid, but we get plenty of sun and I've got a good watering source, so no problems there. I'll be building another raised garden bed to grow my hops because I will be dealing with a whole different mess of problems - red clay dirt, pests, etc...

I'm thinking of trying the Kent again, they were slow to come in, but they were hardy, and I'm also thinking of planting some Cascade since they seem to be the most common hop planted down here. I'll go ahead and order a few Magnum rhizomes again and see how those fair down here.

I'm excited to start this adventure again. It should be exciting to see how my experience differs than that in the north.

Where did I go?

Well, I took a long, long hiatus from this blog. Yes, only after 6 posts, I managed to completely fail to post anything.

Long story short, my wife got relocated for her job, I got laid off, and we ended up moving to North Carolina. Sadly, I never got to see my hops come in since we moved away in August, but I heard that they had a fairly good yield. I willed them to my old next-door neighbors who dug them up in the fall and transplanted them into their yard. I hope they do well next year.

Anyway, with a new year and a new growing season just ahead of us, I am going to try going for round 2 this year. You can follow my progress from start to finish.

Things are a little different from last time. I've actually become fairly well read in the art of homebrewing, and I just got everything I need to brew from home yesterday as a lovely present from my wife.

I've got everything I need for a two-stage fermentation process and I'm going to start my first batch from a kit this week. I figure it will take 4 weeks from start to finish, and by the time my first batch is complete, my new rhizomes will be in and I can start the whole process over.

Of course, I'll keep you posted.

Breaking Ground!

Well, almost 14 days later, my hops have finally decided to break through the soil!

I was starting to get worried. We had lots of rain followed by some cold days, and I was afraid I might lose them. Well, the good news is that all 4 vines are established and growing. I'm sure now that they've broken through they will start to grow more each week.

So, that's a relief - what was the point of documenting this process if I didn't have anything to grow?!

Anyway, I've finished reading my homebrewing books - and I'm pretty sure that I have a firm grasp on what I need to do to brew my first batch. In addition, I now think I have a better appreciation for the beer that I do drink (I always appreciated the complexities of the beer I drank, but now I understand why, for instance, why some beers taste smooth or have more body).

Talked with my neighbor this weekend - he just bought some hops as well. I'll have to find out what varieties he got, but we're going to be going through this together. He also has all the homebrew equipment we need, so that's going to take some of the edge off the expenses.

Well, might be another week or two before I post again - I think the next post will be about training the vines and setting up my hop yard.

Waiting...

I was very concerned that I may have lost my hops last week, because immediately after I planted them, we had about four straight days of rain - and while they like water, they don't like that much water. I was afraid that not even a week into this, and I had already killed them.

Well, fortunately, they are doing ok. I think within the next day or two they will finally break through the soil. Yesterday, I put down some organic hummus and cow manure on top of the bed to add some nutrients that could have been washed away from the rain. After the hops reach a foot, I'm also going to put down some mulch to keep down weeds.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I strongly believe in organic gardening, so no pesticides or chemicals will be used.

Anyway, the waiting game sucks, but the fun side is that I've been reading a lot about brewing, and I have a really good understanding of the basics. I've ordered some catalogs to look at equipment and will probably order that in a month or so.

I've decided that maybe making a few batches of beer over the summer will help me out so when it comes time to brewing my own hops, I don't screw it up.

There is so much to learn. I think this is going to be a great hobby.

Planting the Hops

Now that my rhizomes have arrived, I thought it would be best to plant them immediately. Normally, if conditions aren't right for planting (potential for frost, poor weather, etc...) you will want to keep them moistened in a zip-lock bag and placed in a refrigerator.

The nice thing is that my rhizomes were shipped with planting instructions, which proved to be quite useful. The hardest part for me was figuring out which way to plant the rhizomes. The instructions say to plant horizontally with the buds facing upwards, however I was unable to determine which end was which. After a quick check online, I found that if you cannot determine which end is up, you can plant it horizontally in the soil. That's the route I decided to take, I figured my success rate would be better that way.

The Garden



This is the area I have set up for growing the hops. It's a north facing wall that gets plenty of sun and has lots of room for growth. More likely than not, I'll probably only get 6' of growth this year, but there is plenty of wall for it to climb if needed. In this picture, you can see that I have two different types of trellis set up, but I am switching over the white trellis with another green trellis like the others. They ran out at Home Depot, so I need to go back and get another one.

While it might look like this box is small, it's actually quite large - it's 12' wide, 2' wide and 2' deep. The box is open on the bottom to promote further root growth. I am using a combination of gardening soil, cow manure and peat moss. I've had great success growing other crops in this box in the past, so I'm sure the hops will thrive once established.

The Hops

I only ended up with 4 rhizomes - the Cascade rhizomes I had ordered ended up selling out, so I'm going to look elsewhere to get these. I hear there is a local nursery that carries hops, so I'm going to see what they offer. I ended up with two varieties - Magnum and Kent Golding.





Once they were planted, I made sure to water. Once I see some growth, I plan on mulching the bed to keep weeds down. From what I've read, these suckers can grow as much as a foot a day - so I'll update the blog every once in awhile with new pictures of growth.

So - what do I do in the meantime? Well... I start learning how to brew, which is why I'm going to research materials I need for brewing at home, and make a trial batch of beer before I attempt to brew my own hops.

Hops Have Arrived!

My hops arrived First Class today!!!

Of course, that could mean only one thing... time to plant the hops!

Sometimes, Dummies need help too.

Everyone always jokes about those "Blah, Blah, Blah for Dummies" books - but truth be told, these books are written by experts in the field who "dumb down" the content for people like me who are clueless about things like homebrewing. That's why I bought "Homebrewing for Dummies".

Now, it was really down to this and another book called "The Brewmaster's Bible", but that book seemed to have a lot of recipes and a few chapters on brewing methods. I needed something that was broken down into beginner, intermediate and advanced sections so I could use it as a reference no matter what stage I was at.

I started reading it last night, and so far - it's a very excellent reference. I've already established what equipment I need, what my startup costs will be, and what I will need to think about when it comes time to harvesting my hops and the process I need to follow to make sure that I don't mess things up.

Between this book and the internet, I'm sure to be covered. Because, let's face it - I'm really a dummy when it comes to this stuff.