First brew with home grown hops

[Lesinge]

a few years ago my wife bought me three First Gold dwarf hop plants for my birthday and as with everything else gardening wise I neglected them for a couple of years and then put them in an area of my garden called “Honey’s Garden” and forgot about them. This year my wife noticed that they were growing along the ground and had tiny hop flowers so I put up a basic frame and trailed them up it. It was great watching them grow and soon I had lots of lovely smelling hop flowers. After watching some great videos on line, thanks Jersey Brewer, I worked out when to pick them. I then used my wife’s biltong box (she is from SA) and a dehumidifier and made a mini Oast house. Once dried I vacuum packed them and put them in the freezer. Last week I made the following beer with them and hopefully will get a good result

166th brew Honey’s Garden English Ale. 30/09/18 This is the beer that is using the first few batches of my First Gold hops grown in the garden. 4.5kg of Golden Promise, 300g of Crystal Malt and 200g of Carapils. Hops were 25g of Target for bitterness (apparently these aren’t good for flavour hops but smell really nice), 15g of My First Gold at 10mins, 15g of the same at 5mins and about 10g for a hopstand when the wort got to 60c. OG is about 1058 so if it gets to 1012 it will be around 6.1%. Colour is a lovely orange with hints of red (bronze!) and the smell is malty. Taste is creamy but with bitterness that starts at the front of the month, moves back and then lingers at the bottom and side. No harshly bitter flavours but with enough bitterness to make it a difficult drink at this stage.

 

[BarnBrian]

I'm looking forward to hearing how this turns out.

 

[Cwrw666]

I picked my hops about a week too soon but the first brew I've made with them, which should have been an IPA, turned out quite nice but definitely not hoppy enough. Drinkable though. Next attempt I'll chuck in enough goldings to add the bitterness and just use my cascade for flavouring. Should work.
next year I'll know better when to pick them.

 

[Sandimas]

Different hops seem to be ready at different times, my Goldings were ready early Sept but the Cascade weren't ready until at least 3 weeks later. I keep watching them and pick them as late as possible, just as you can see them starting to turn.