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