The Barn has been almost dead lately. Maybe it's broken?
Yesterday was a good day to store homegrown hops and felt it worthy to
share a storage technique that worked very nicely.
First step was to air dry the hops. I used a large window screen
suspended in my outside shed. The building is very dry and gathers
significant heat when closed. In about 4 days, the fresh hops were
ready for "bailing."
We have a vacuum sealing machine and it seemed very logical to see how
it worked. I started by making a fairly long bag possibly 2+feet long.
I stuffed and stuffed as many hops as I could into the bag and connected
it to the vacuum machine. Using the "jog" button, I pulled a great
vacuum on the hops and made a mini brick. The jog cycle doesn't seal
the bag so I stuffed in more hops.
My harvest this year was about two 5 gallon buckets of hops. When dry
and compact, I ended up with a flat sack about 2 feet and less than 2
inches thick.
I'll be using this process again!
Sincerely,
Rick Oftel
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