When to Pick Hops: The Papery Rustle Test and How to Dry Cones

Judge by feel, not by looks

A hop cone reaches full size well before it is ready. If you pick on appearance you will pick a week or two early, when the cones are still plump, slightly damp and rubbery, low in the resins you want and prone to going flat in storage. Ripeness is a change in texture, and it is easy to feel once you have felt it once.

Squeeze a cone gently in your palm. An unready cone feels soft and springy, stays compressed when you let go, and feels slightly moist. A ready cone feels light and dry, is papery to the touch, springs back into shape, and makes a distinct dry rustle when you roll a handful together. That rustle is the reliable signal.

Two other checks confirm it. Pull a cone apart across the middle: the lupulin at the base of each bract should be plentiful, deep yellow and sticky rather than pale and thin. And the smell should have moved from green and grassy to strong and aromatic. Together, the rustle, the yellow lupulin and the aroma tell you to pick; any one alone can mislead.

Cones on a single plant do not all ripen together. The ones at the top and in full sun come first. It is entirely normal to pick a plant over two or three visits across a week or two rather than stripping it in one go.

Overripe cones are a real loss, not just a cosmetic one. Once the bracts go brown at the edges and the lupulin turns orange, the aroma has largely gone and it does not come back. Err a day or two late rather than a week.

Picking without shredding your arms

The hooked hairs that let the bine climb are unpleasant to work against in quantity, and at harvest you handle the whole plant. Long sleeves, long trousers and gloves are not optional advice here; an hour of picking in short sleeves leaves both forearms covered in fine scratches.

1. Bring the bines down to you Cut the bine three to four feet (90 to 120 cm) above the ground, then release the string at the top or lower the top wire and bring the whole bine down in one piece. Picking cones at the top of a ladder while balancing an armful of bine is the most dangerous part of growing hops and is entirely avoidable.
2. Lay it out and pick sitting down Spread the bine on a sheet or a tarpaulin, or hang it from a low rail, and work along it. Pick each cone with the short stem attached; pulling a cone off bare damages it and lets the bracts shatter.
3. Sort as you go Drop clean, well-formed cones into one container and put anything browned, moldy or heavily aphid-damaged straight into another for the compost. A few moldy cones in a drying batch will spoil the lot.
4. Weigh the picking Weigh what you get from each plant while it is still fresh, and note it. Green weight loses roughly three quarters in drying, so five pounds (2.3 kg) of fresh cones gives around one and a quarter pounds (570 g) dry. Recording both numbers each year is the clearest measure of whether a crown is improving.
5. Deal with the spent bine Cut the remaining stub down to about a foot (30 cm) once the foliage has died back, and compost or shred the bines. Do not leave them heaped at the base of the plant, where they hold mildew spores over winter.

Dry them the same day

Fresh cones are around eighty percent water and will heat, go slimy and mold within a day or two in a heap. Drying is not an optional finishing step; it is part of the harvest, and it starts the same afternoon you pick.

Spread the cones in a single layer, no more than two or three cones deep, on mesh screens, an old window screen, a clean sheet or slatted trays, somewhere warm, dry and shaded with air moving through. An airing cupboard, a shed with a fan running, or a spare room with the window open all work. Keep them out of direct sun, which bleaches the cones and drives off aroma. Do not exceed about 140F (60C) if you are using a dehydrator or a warm oven with the door ajar, since higher temperatures cook off the volatile oils and leave a dull, hay-like smell.

Turn the cones gently once or twice a day. Depending on conditions they take one to three days. They are dry when the central stem inside the cone snaps cleanly rather than bending, the bracts feel crisp and separate easily, and some of the yellow lupulin falls loose when you handle them. Under-dried cones will mold in storage; badly over-dried ones shatter to dust and lose aroma.

Storing what you dried

Dried cones keep their character only if you keep oxygen, heat and light away from them. Pack them tightly into bags or jars, push out as much air as you can, seal, and put them in a freezer. Vacuum sealing is better still. Stored that way they hold up well for a year or more; loose in a cupboard at room temperature they fade noticeably within a couple of months and smell stale within a season.

Label every bag with the plant it came from, the picking date and the dry weight before it goes in the freezer. Dried cones are indistinguishable from each other by sight, and an unlabelled bag found next winter is a guess rather than a harvest.

Keeping year-on-year records of picking date and dry weight per crown tells you more than any other measurement you can take. A crown that gains weight each year is establishing normally; one that has dropped for two years running is either crowded, short of light, or ready to be lifted and divided.