Beerpedia

It’s our brewers most favourite time of the year - the hop harvest. Learn more about it in our latest blog post.

We love hops. They give beer the pronounced aromas and the more subtle ones. Hop bitterness helps balance the sugars from the malt making the beer the best drink in the world. We love to watch hops grow and we absolutely love to see them harvested.

Hops are like Spiderman. They will climb on almost anything and for a plant they are extremely quick. Depending on the soil and weather conditions they can grow 30 centimeters a day and up to 10 meters a year.

Hops are also a delicate plant that must be treated with care. The most important growth factors are the soil and the hop field location. A new hop field can take up to three years to properly develop and start giving a rich harvest. In the first year the plant is focused on getting its roots stronger and deeper. In the second year the focus turns to the flowering and the third year brings the most fruitful harvest. Usually hops are planted in spring and harvested in September. The part that is used for brewing and is referred to as hops is actually the female flower of the hop plant Humulus lupulus.

Like in brewing, timing is essential because you don't want to harvest your hops too early. If you miss the timing, it is much better to pick over-ripe hops. There are several ways to know that hops are ready for harvesting. One way is to squeeze the cone and if it stays compressed it means that it is still too early to harvest. Other ways include sniffing the cone, looking at it or feeling it with your hands.

Once it is determined that the hops are ripe, they can be picked by hand or by cutting down the vine. When cutting, it is important not to damage the root. Hop harvesting used to be a labour intensive job but nowadays a lot of machinery is involved making the harvest easier. Vines are "top cut" and transported to a picking machine where the hops are separated from the leaves. Fresh hops contain about 80% water so they have to be dried in order to bring down the moisture to about 10%. Heated air in a special facility dries the hops in 6-8 hours after which hops rest for a day before being packaged in bails and delivered all over the world.