Five months ago, I got up early one Sunday morning to go into the woods and fight off bugs and brambles that shred my legs to ribbons, all so that I could say I played a part in developing a commercial beer. I’ve just tasted the result.

A couple recipes to mark the pumpkin harvest.

Your hands are sticky with the golden resin. There are shopping bags full of green cones in a spare room, waiting to be used or dried and stored for later.

It finally arrived — harvest week. Hop cones ready to be plucked, dried and refrigerated until I’d need them for a delicious IPA or Porter.

I’ve been picking other people’s hops for weeks, but this time, it would be my home-grown Willamettes.

It pains me to write that my harvest is woefully unimpressive.

All told, I’ll probably finish with 1 oz. of dried flowers, the cones of which are small and pathetic. It was strange, as if someone had flipped a switch that turned off their growth mid-development. Many were less than an inch long — almost not even worth picking.

What went wrong?

Right around this time of year, you can probably take a stroll around the neighborhood and tell pretty easily which botonists on the block are also homebrewers.

Hop bines with full, tight cones will be climbing alongside the garage, twisting through a fence or perhaps draping themselves 20 feet high over a trellis built especially for them. (You’d always wondered during the winter what the hell that thing was.)

And depending on what variety was planted, and also where you live, you may see your neighbor outside harvesting bags full of fresh hops, ready to be thrown into a boil for some delicious beer.

If you are among the neighborhood hop heads, then you might be outside picking cones yourself. But it’s a challenge to know the right time to harvest. Also, drying and storing these hops should also receive careful attention. Otherwise, they’ll degrade and won’t contribute the fresh flavors that you’d worked so hard all season to cultivate. Below are a few tips I’ve picked up over the past three years of growing my own hops, as well as some information gathered from people more expert than myself.

Damn Irene. There are so many hops ripe for picking now, that I’m running out of time to do a fresh hop ale. This weekend would have been perfect, if not for a swirling mass of terror fumbling its way up the East Coast.

And so, I’ve picked everything I can before the storm arrives, and will cross my fingers and hope it leaves a few cones around.

Who knows. I might even enjoy the storm.

Low Barometer

By Robert Bridges
The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,

This week, a complete stranger invited me over to his house to harvest some Cascade hops that were climbing up a trellis on his back deck.

My neighbors down the street, Sarah and Bryan, have some glorious hops growing along an old wire fence.

Several weeks ago, frustrated by lame attempts to control the Japanese beetles that were chewing through the leaves on my hop plants, I gave in and resorted to pesticide.

It was an insecticidal soap, supposedly non-toxic and food-safe, but I still should have known better.

The leaves are now browning at the tips and some have turned yellow. I’ve read that there are all sorts of things that cause this to happen — including lack of watering (a distinct possibility) and nutrient deficiencies. But I’ve got some pretty healthy looking compost feeding them, and this same problem happened last year when I attempted to control the beetles with a pesticide. I’m beginning to think it’s not a coincidence.

Even worse, the beetles are still chomping away.

It reminded me of this poem by William Blake. If only the beetles had met the same fate as Blake’s “foe.”

Ask, and ye shall receive.

It’s not always true, but it sure as hell worked this week. Last Saturday, with temperatures blazing well into the ’90s in New Hampshire, the hops were looking brown and parched. I played a Beatles tune as a kind of rain dance for some relief. And this week, the clouds delivered.

The hop leaves are looking healthy again and the cones seem to be developing just fine. Unfortunately, it’s not looking like I’m going to get any Magnums, which have been disappointingly unproductive in the three years since I’ve planted them. The Chinook, which are supposed to perform pretty well up here, have sprouted a few cones, but not many. My Willamettes, on the other hand, are developing just fine. I’m anticipating a mid-September harvest.

So, in thanks to the rain, here is a fun poem by Shel Silverstein.