Today, I was watching a video about hops, the little flowery green things that are sometimes used to flavor beer. I was thinking that they might be interesting to flavor my kombucha, so I am in the process of doing research, and then probably ordering a few rhizomes and growing a couple of hop vines. Anyway, it turns out that hops are useful for many things besides just flavoring beer, which is why they were even put into beer in the first place, according to the hops video. They are actually in the same family as cannabis, and have some of the same relaxing and pain-relieving properties as cannabis has. One article said the little yellow stuff in the flowers has inulin, which is a prebiotic, so that would be good, too. It can be made into a tea, or even put into a little dream pillow, which is supposed to help you sleep better at night when you put it under your regular pillow. I will be reporting more as I learn more, but here is an interesting little video from a herbalist that explained the basic reason why hops are healthy to use.
I have ordered 2 hop vine rhizomes from ebay, and Bobby is going to make us a kind of trellis fence for them to climb up on , and hopefully, keep them from growing too tall for me to harvest this fall. We probably won’t get much this first year, but i am hoping that we at least get a few hop flowers. I have been learning more about putting hops into kombucha, and apparently, a lot of people really like it; so I ordered a small packet of hops pellets from Amazon, and they should be here this weekend. I will try putting some in my next batch of kombucha 2nd ferment, and they suggest adding a little bot of orange peel or orange juice for flavor. I should be able to use the pellets for hop tea also, as long as I use a fine filter, like a coffee filter, although it said that hops become more bitter, the hotter the water. So, I will be starting with a small amount and experimenting.
I have researched Hops for some time, and I think I took some for a while, I've taken so much over my long life, and I can recall visiting an herbalist yrs ago as he was an expert in hops and I bought his book. On the hops, my dad overall was a healthy alkie with his yrs of drinking beer. No drugs in his life except BP med and otc pain pill.
My hop rhizomes arrived, and I planted them in a container until Bobby had put up the trellis for the hops to climb and also tilled up the space underneath the trellis. I planted them yesterday, and they had already started to get little green sprouts at the top from when I put them in the container. I was reading that some people eat the fresh shoots, similar to asparagus, but I am not going to do anything except let mine grow this year, and harvest the little green flowers, assuming that we get some. When I lived in Idaho, I worked in the hop fields there many years ago, and it was an interesting job, especially when we were cutting the vines and harvesting the hops. I didn’t know that hops were related to cannabis, but now that I know that, I can kind of see the similarity in the appearance of my little shoots to pictures I have seem of cannabis leaves. The hops have a lot of the same healing properties, but are perfectly legal to grow, so I am hoping to be able to learn how to use the hops for making tea, and adding to kombucha and maybe even get a pipe and try smoking some……who knows.
Since you worked in the hop fields @Yvonne Smith I assume you know they can get VERY tall. I don't know how they will do in the heat of Alabama. It will be a great experiment
I do know that they get very tall, so I expect to have to try and keep mine pruned to fit on the trellis. I belong to a forum that also includes hops and kombucha, and some people have them growing along their house porch on a trellis; so I think that mine will be okay, too. If this trellis is not strong enough, we can enhance it with some of the bamboo that we have plenty of. When I worked in the hops, I enjoyed driving the truck for harvesting. Its was a huge (probably 2 ton)truck, and I drove down the rows, and the guys that did the cutting would be right behind the truck and cut the tops of the vines/strings, so the truck looked like a giant pile of green spaghetti when I went down the road to haul it back to the processing plant. We drove 12 hour shifts, and sometimes part of another shift, and they harvested 24 hours a day once they started harvesting the hops. When I got home, I smelled like hops, and peeled off my clothes and into the wash machine, and me into the shower before I did anything else. The kids all went along with their parents when we worked during the summer, training the hops to climb up the ropes, and we were all out there from daybreak to dark every day. It was hard work, and not much pay, but I learned a lot, and did actually enjoy it back then.
Apparently hops are grown in the Adelaide foothills @Yvonne Smith and SA is a hot dry climate https://citymag.indaily.com.au/commerce/business-profile/adelaide-beer-hills-hops-marc-guyatt/ Sorta funny …..when you mentioned hops, I though you meant Red Hops like grow in desert like conditions in NSW where I lived as a youngster copied this bit from the above link In its first year, Hills Hops produced 52 kilos from 75 plants. This year Marc has added another three rows and aims to reach a yield of 100 kilos, benefitting from the additional trellises and more established plants.