Yep.  I’m growing hops again this year.  As you may, or may not, know … I was out of the country until the early part of May.  My lovely bride took care of my hop vines for me and she got them off to a great start–they are now in full bloom and I’ll have to decide soon when is the appropriate time to pick them.  I have three varieties I’m growing: Chinook, Cascade, and Nugget.

The Chinook:  My Chinook vine took a hit this year — it was awesome early — had already grown to my roof and was spilling over at the top.  Then my air conditioner went out and the repairmen totally destroyed my vine.  I mean they completely pulled it out at the ground level.  I gotta tell you — hops are resilient!  Take a look at the pictures of my Chinook now … completely regrown and producing flowers (and this was in July).  Wow.  Oh, you can also see my new A/C unit in these pics.

The Cascade:  Last year I trimmed and tried to follow the advice about keeping the vines “spruced up” thinking that would produce more hop flowers.  NOT!  I only got about an ounce of Cascade hops out of my vine.  This year I just let the vine go.  It could grow wherever it wanted to go … and it did!  Talk about produce flowers!  Check out these pictures of how it has grown and started producing. We’ll see if I get more than one ounce this year!

The Nugget:  Lastly, I have the Nugget hops.  I did the same thing with these as I did with the Cascade … I just let them go.  They are growing hop flowers all over the place.  We’ll see if I get more than one ounce out of them this year too.  See the pictures:

This is kind of funny, really.  I’m just renting this house — it will be interesting to see what the next renters/owners think of these vines!  They are now very well established — they will be hard to get rid of … LOL!

Enjoy,

Beer Mentor