Home Grown HOPS  
Most home brewers eventually wonder if they can grow their own hops at home to use in their beer brewing ventures.  I did, and quickly found a source of live hop plants.  As it turns out, most homebrewing shops have rhizomes (root stock planted in the fall, which will form a new hop vine the following spring) available to their customers.  If not, there are plenty of sources available on the Internet, such as Freshops.  The hops used for brewing purposes are female, and it is the female flowers, called cones, that are used for brewing, and all rhizomes available to the homebrewer are female.
A Brief History of my Hop Vines

I planted my rhizomes as soon as the ground thawed in the spring.  The first vines came through the ground in early May, and I was surprised at how fast they grew.  The hop vines need to grow up a trellis of some sort, and I used nylon string attatched to my roof soffet.  Each plant had four strings, starting from a stake in the ground and fanning out to the roof, each string attatched about 20" apart.  The first year (Hops are perennials, and will come back bigger-n-better each year) the vines only grew about 8' high, and didn't get any cones.  It is during this time that the plant is establishing it's root system.  The second year was more productive, although I only harvested enough cones for one 5 gallon batch of beer.I have Saaz and Willamette vines, and the Willamette is definately a more aggressive vine.  The hop cones appear in mid summer, and are ready to harvest when they start to feel papery, and the lupulin glands become evident as tiny, yellow particles along the bottom of the cones.  The cones can be picked and dried at room temperature by placing them on a screen to allow for air circulation.  Avoid drying in the oven.The cones are completely dry when the inner stem snaps and breaks when it is bent.  At this time, the cones should be stored in the freezer in an air-tight bag which has had the air squeezed out of it.  I stored mine in a seal-a-meal bag which was first purged with Nitrogen gas.The only real disapointment was that I didn't get pulled over by the police for when I was transporting this bag to and from work, which is where I weighed the contents.  I was kind of hoping I'd get pulled over, and have the cop see this baggie sitting on the passanger seat.  Next thing you know...I'd be cuffed and hauled off to the station.  (Have you noticed how the police like to "Save the World" by harassing baggie-toting hippies whenever they can...?)  I can hear it now, Me:  "But officer...it's a bag of hops".  Officer:  "Well, you just Hops into the squad car and we'll have the judge decide on that!"  :-) 
Propogation of New Hop Plants

How can you get free hop plants from one of your buddies, or multiply the hop plants you already have...?  Very simple...just chop off a chunk of root stock or stem stock which is full of buds, and plant it in the ground a few inches below the soil surface.  Do this in the fall or early spring, and you will have a new plant.  The picture shown here is one of the many stems coming out of the ground from the base of my Willamette hop vine.  This one piece can be removed and cut into 3 or 4 smaller pieces, each of which will form a new vine in the spring.  The main stalk was about 3 times the size of this one.  Note the numerous buds on the stalk which will remain dormant until spring, at which point they will sprout into roots and vines.  If you cannot plant the stock right away, keep the pieces moist and in the refrigerator until you can get them buried in the ground.  Root stock will keep for several weeks this way. 

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