Growing hops/wild hops ??

Does anyone know how far north hops will grow, as my name suggests I am in Cheshire, and regularly look for wild hops growing when out walking the dog, but to no avail.

So can I grow my own here in Cheshire, and does anyone know if they grow wild this far north ?

Am in the north of the county a stones throw from the Derbyshire peaks if that makes a difference!

Thanks in advance

cheshirehomebrew said:

Does anyone know how far north hops will grow, as my name suggests I am in Cheshire, and regularly look for wild hops growing when out walking the dog, but to no avail.

So can I grow my own here in Cheshire, and does anyone know if they grow wild this far north ?

Am in the north of the county a stones throw from the Derbyshire peaks if that makes a difference!

Thanks in advance

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I wouldn't bother with wild hops, you may not even get a female plant and it's even less likely you'll get something that tastes good. I'm growing Target, Fuggle and Kent Golding in my back garden near Colchester and my brother in law is growing Early Bird, Challenger and Prima Donna (First Gold) in his garden in Nottingham. We got them from Willingham Nurseries online this April.

They've all done well in what's been a cold summer but the Early Bird has been the most impressive - it's shot up to about 5 meters and has yielded loads of cones in this its first year. If you've got a sunny spot in your garden I'd say you'll have no problem at all growing that one. I also took some early cuttings to see if I could propagate them and boy did that work better than I thought. I'm so overrun with new Goldings hop plants I'm going to give them away at our village fair next year!

foxbat said:

I wouldn't bother with wild hops, you may not even get a female plant and it's even less likely you'll get something that tastes good. I'm growing Target, Fuggle and Kent Golding in my back garden near Colchester and my brother in law is growing Early Bird, Challenger and Prima Donna (First Gold) in his garden in Nottingham. We got them from Willingham Nurseries online this April.

They've all done well in what's been a cold summer but the Early Bird has been the most impressive - it's shot up to about 5 meters and has yielded loads of cones in this its first year. If you've got a sunny spot in your garden I'd say you'll have no problem at all growing that one. I also took some early cuttings to see if I could propagate them and boy did that work better than I thought. I'm so overrun with new Goldings hop plants I'm going to give them away at our village fair next year!

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You haven't got any going spare have you??!!

ManseMasher said:

You haven't got any going spare have you??!!

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I reckon I will have next spring. It's end of season now so they'll soon be dying off above ground. When they've done that I plan to put all the pots in the greenhouse for protection over the winter and whatever's developed a strong enough root system to come back next spring I'll either give away to our local fair or to any other good home.

keep this updated chaps as i am on the cheshire wales shropshire border and am thinking on hops...

This year's hops are in with mixed results. I went away on holiday last week and everything was fine but when I got back quite a lot of my Fuggles had already gone brown and were useless but I still managed to harvest what remained, probably half the total crop. The Kent Golding cropped heavily which was nice but the Target never really produced many bines. I've no idea why because it looks perfectly healthy to me.

In the attached picture the top is Kent Golding, bottom left is Target and bottom right is Fuggle. There’s about 250g of Kent Golding and 50g each of Fuggle and Target. Obviously they’ll get lighter when dried, which is something I’m going to go and research how to do right now. I have an 'Andrew James' vacuum sealer that I got on ebay for about £40 which I’ll use to seal these then I’ll freeze them to keep them fresh until time for use.

So.... any ideas for recipes? I'm thinking a traditional English Best would be a good use for these...

mike-os said:

keep this updated chaps as i am on the cheshire wales shropshire border and am thinking on hops...

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Would love to know how this went (from your username I guess you're in Oswestry... I'm near Ellesmere)

MattWedds said:

Would love to know how this went (from your username I guess you're in Oswestry... I'm near Ellesmere)

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I'm in Llangollen, but was brought up in Oswestry. My biology teacher was a home brewer and I remember him saying that wild hops grew in the hedgerows near his home in Whittington, but they were nothing like as good as the commercial ones from Kent.

Wild hops also grow in Norway, so don't bother. It's luck or bad luck, easy as that.

By the way, in early spring.. dig up excess hops shoots -> they are a true delicacy.

Llanbrewer said:

I'm in Llangollen, but was brought up in Oswestry. My biology teacher was a home brewer and I remember him saying that wild hops grew in the hedgerows near his home in Whittington, but they were nothing like as good as the commercial ones from Kent.

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Quick!! To Whittington!

Meet you in the Boote for an Old Tom and a bag of pork scratchings

First year of growing hops for me, I dried them on baking tray in the airing cupboard. I looked in there a few weeks ago and the Cascade were still in there, oops I'd forgot about them. Anyway, made up a small-volume Extract brew with them and a bit of Carahell - just bottled it today and it's lovely, so the elongated drying period didn't harm them :)