Notebook — Hops

Picked the 2nd batch of Cascade and two additional varieties - Magnum and Galena - today, all three have amazing aromas!

The 1st batch of Cascade has been bagged and can be ordered now. Orders can be picked up from Roots Down's CSA pick-up sites, from the Kingston and Ottawa markets, or for a small postage & handling fee delivered anywhere in Canada.

We spent a cool Labour Day afternoon hand picking the first lot of Cascade. With the two additional rows of Cascade planted last year, we'll have a lot of Cascade hops available for sale this year. Please check our ordering page to see when the first lot of Cascade will be available to order.

The first crop of 2011 hand picked and hand packed certified organic whole leaf hops are now available to purchase from Roots Down Organic Farm.

Please check our ordering page to see what varieties can be ordered now and picked up from Roots Down's CSA pick-up sites, from the Kingston and Ottawa markets, or for a small postage & handling fee delivered anywhere in Canada.

Hallertauer was ready to be picked. A fun afternoon and evening hand picking the first crop of hops for 2011. With the aroma of lupulin in the air, we enjoyed a great dinner with brisket and chicken from the Pig Iron Barbecue and some beer samples from Kal Wallner, The Electric Brewery.

We made some modifications to the oast (hops dryer). We added two additional fans to the top of the dryer to help improve the flow of the air and duct piping to remove the moist air from the room. We also placed a dehumidifier in the room to remove moisture from the air and provide heat for the dryer.

Another late start to training and pruning meant that some bines had already grown over six feet! With help this year, we were able to train all of the bines, weed around the crowns and prune back all of the unwanted shoots in less than a day.

Controlling weeds in the hops yard has been a very time consuming task especially over the last couple of years with wetter than normal weather.

This year we decided to see if we could control the weeds using a porous ground cover. We were able to source some reasonably priced ground cover from BFG Supply Co. in Lancaster, NY. We rolled out the ground cover the length of each row, created holes for each crown, slid the ground over the row and pegged it down. We also added rocks to ensure that the wind didn't get underneath and blow it away!

A little later than we planned, however we were finally able to plant some new rhizomes and feed the hops.

The survival rate of the rhizomes we planted in the four new rows last year was mixed. The Cascade, Chinook and Zeus varieties did very well, however Magnum and Centennial were spotty and Saaz didn't survive at all. We were able to take rhizomes from older rows in the hops yard and plant replacements.

We applied a good measure of compost and an alfalfa based fertilizer (to help boost nitrogen levels in the soil) to all of the plants in the hop yard.

A beautiful spring day - perfect for chopping down more black locust trees for the trellising in the four new rows in the hops yard. Selecting trees for poles is challenging as black locust trees do not grow very straight.

Stacked the poles for drying - we can't place them in the ground immediately after chopping them down as they will start to grow again!

The first crop of 2010 hand picked and hand packed certified organic whole leaf hops are now available to purchase from Roots Down Organic Farm.

Please check our ordering page to see what varieties can be ordered now and picked up from Roots Down's CSA pick-up sites, from the Kingston and Ottawa markets, or for a small postage & handling fee delivered anywhere in Canada.

After a couple of years of cobbling together a temporary structure for drying hops after each harvest, we needed to make an oast (hops dryer) that could handle the increasing volume of hops being picked each year.

With help from Chris Velden, a chef from Halifax, NS who is a big supporter of local and sustainable food, we designed and built a hops dryer that can hold up to 20 lbs of hops. Standing just under 8ft tall, the hops dryer uses three booster duct fans to push air through ten drawers with bottoms made from door/window mesh screen.

The new hops dryer now makes it very easy to rotate the hops for even drying and we are able to dry the hops in less than 48 hours.

Other priorities on the farm and some wet weather meant that we didn’t get to the training and pruning of the hops until later than we wanted. The two week delay provided the hops ample time to grow, some plants with bines already over six feet!

Over a couple days we were able to train all of the bines onto the twine, weed around the crowns again and prune back all of the unwanted shoots. Our interns this year learnt all about Hoppers’ Rash, the long bines clinging to any bare skin – long sleeves are a must if you don’t want itchy skin for a day or so afterwards.

Found a great supplier of hop twine for this year. Millenniumsoils Coir, based in St. Catharines, Ontario, sells biodegradable coir fibre, pre-cut to any length you want. Great service, delivered a few days after ordering in four very large boxes!

We experimented with a number of anchors bent out of wire, however we couldn’t get any of them to stay in the soil when force was exerted on them. So we tied the twine again to the bottom wire that is in place for the irrigation. This works well, however we will need to wait until the bines are a little longer before tying them onto the twine.

A great day for digging and planting rhizomes – warm and sunny!

There was a great difference between the numbers of rhizomes each variety produced with Cascade being the most prolific. We planted replacements for hops rhizomes that did not survive from 2008 and 2009, varieties included Hallertauer, Cascade and Centennial.

We prepared four new rows in the hops yard and planted an additional two rows of Cascade, 1/3 of a row of Magnum, 2/3 of a row of Centennial and a handful of Brewers Gold. We also planted additional rhizomes sourced from Left Fields in B.C. - replacements for Chinook (none survived in 2009) and two new varieties: Saaz and Zeus. New plantings were well watered and top dressed with compost.

Fingers crossed for a much better survival rate – rhizomes sourced from our hop yard were replanted in less than a day after being removed from parent plant.

Based on the number of rhizomes we found this year, we will be accepting orders for rhizomes in 2011. Check back here early next year for ordering information.

A very warm spring resulted in the hop crowns displaying lots of new shoots a few weeks earlier than normal. This meant an earlier start to our spring hop yard activities including weeding around the crowns and spreading compost.

All of the crowns are in good shape after the winter. Digging around the older crowns, planted in 2008, exposes lots of rhizomes – should have enough to expand the hops yard in a couple of weeks.

The first crop of hand picked and hand packed certified organic whole leaf hops are now available from Roots Down Organic Farm.

Please check our ordering page to see what varieties can be ordered now and picked up from Roots Down’s CSA pick-up sites, from the Kingston and Ottawa markets, or for a small postage & handling fee delivered anywhere in Canada.

Another wet spring and summer has meant another challenging season for the hops yard.

We started the season in April by removing mulch from the crowns, pruning back the roots and cutting back the old growth from the crown to make way for this year’s growth. We removed weeds from the crowns, worked up the soil around them and applied a good measure of compost to every one.

Soil was prepared in late April for the new rows in the hops yard. In early May, we planted rhizomes in the existing rows of hops where rhizomes from the previous year did not grow and planted rhizomes in the new rows, including some new varieties: Chinook, Kent Golding, and Galena - all of these rhizomes were sourced from Left Fields in B.C.

Perle rhizomes sourced from Foothill Farms were planted in late May - due to a number of delays in receiving them - unfortunately, none of them survived. The Chinook rhizomes from Left Fields also failed to thrive – probably due to the excessive amount of rain we had in the spring.

During the month of May we trimmed backed the excess shoots for the rhizomes planted last year, training between two and four remaining bines per twine. For the new rows in the hops yard, we used dried out black locust trees for the poles in the trellising – they are an extremely hard wood and last for a long time. They are an invasive species and are rapidly spreading through parts of the bush on the farm – finally a use for this ‘weed’. Not sure that the poles have been dried long enough as some of them are sprouting – will have to keep an eye on them!

The wet spring and summer meant that we spent a lot of time hand weeding the hops yard. We will have to increase the amount of mulch applied in the fall to better control the weeds next year. Despite the challenges this season (including an outbreak of tent caterpillars), all of the bines starting flowering in early July and hops began appearing in late July.

We started hand harvesting hops in mid August and expect to be finished in early September. We will have 12 varieties of whole leaf hops available to purchase this year – see more information about ordering our whole leaf organic hops.

If you would like further information, are interested in joining our mailing list, or have any questions, please send us an email.

Our experiment with hops this year is just the beginning of our long term plan—an organic micro brewery producing beer using water, barley and hops all sourced from one location. Even in times of recession and economic uncertainty (or maybe because of) there will always be the need for a proper glass of beer.

In February of this year we contacted a number of micro breweries across Ontario surveying what hops they used and whether there was any desire to source hops locally. Due to the considerable interest, we started drawing up plans for our hops yard.

The soil was prepared and rhizomes planted in early May. All of the rhizomes were sourced from Left Fields in B.C and the Hallertauer plants were sourced from Richters Herbs. We planted 14 different varieties of hops to determine what would grow well in the local soil type and climate.

A very wet spring this year required a lot of weeding by hand during July to ensure the weeds didn’t take over the hops yard. It also meant that two of the varieties—Sterling and Crystal—did not survive due to the excessive amount of moisture in the ground.

We completed the trellising for the first section of the hops yard at the end of July. We used dead cedar trees for the poles that were sourced from the forest on our farm at the beginning of April before the spring thaw.

All of the growth this year was focused on the plants' root systems. However, a number of the plants did grow tall vines and a few even produced cones during August. We are now preparing the hops yard for winter by cutting back the vines and covering all of the plants with compost and mulch. We will also be sourcing more cedar poles and preparing the next section of the hops yard later this month for planting rhizomes in spring next year.

If you are interested in buying hops from Roots Down, pricing and availability will be provided next year. Please check our website in spring for an update, or contact us now to join our mailing list and we will send out an update and ordering information later in the year via email.

If you would like further information, are interested in joining our mailing list, or have any questions, please send us an email.