Harvesting Hops!

It was that time of the year again... time to harvest our beer!
Well, the hops that will go into the beer.

Last year we were newbies, and didn't really know what we were doing. All the same, DadB made some great tasting beer with them.

We have been so busy lately, we were probably a couple weeks late on harvesting the hops. Some of them are a bit more dried brown than others, but the pollen is still inside the cones, and that is the important part that flavors the beer.

We set them out on screens to dry for a few days. (They dry in the bright pink and yellow room that was painted by the previous owner.) We will get around to painting it eventually...

Once dried, we weighed them on a kitchen scale so we could seal them in 2 ounce packages. (I guess that is about how much you need per batch of beer.)
When weighing the dry hops they were a little smaller than a volleyball, but after vacuum sealing, they turned out to be about the size of a magazine.

I had never used a vacuum sealer before, so Eva was kind enough to help figure it out.

After a successful trial run, we started to get the hang of it and packaged 9 full bags and one more half full for a total of 19 ounces! Quite the harvest.  Into the freezer they went, to best preserve them until they can be used.

All that work called for a reward of a puppy-cuddle on the couch.







With hops season comes football season! Since everyone else in the family has a jersey, Dear Husband (DH) decided Eva needed one too! She looks adorable in it. I even caught a picture of her mid-yawn.