Sunday, August 30 we harvested the Cascade hop cones.  We harvested 15 5/8 oz wet (444g) of luscious hops!  Below are some images of our hop harvest.   After I got the hops home I set them out on some non-fiberglass furnace filters and bungee corded them to a box fan for drying.  I can’t accept credit for this drying method, I got the idea from Alton Brown’s Beef Jerky Good Eats episode on the Food Network.  Below are some pictures of my drying rig.  I blasted them with the box fan for 4 days, I’m sure they were plenty dry after about 2 days, but wanted to be sure.  After drying, the hop’s weight had decreased by nearly a factor of 5!  The 15 5/8oz (444g) of wet hops now tipped the scale at 3 5/8 oz (106g).  Finally I put all the dried hops into a vacuum seal bag and sealed them up for storage in the freezer until brew day.  You can seem them sealed up in a bag not much longer than an average size banana.

Now the brainstorming begins for a recipe using these hops.  Although it shouldn’t take too much brainstorming.  We want to showcase our hops in an American Pale Ale, so the recipe will be rather simple with a clean yeast and we will use only these hops.  Look for the recipe sometime soon!  Until then, enjoy the hops pictures!