#first gold

[midgardbrewhouse]

Homegrown Hops - Progress August 2019

The burrs out on both my Fuggles and First Gold hops now, plenty of rain and shine doing the well.

[midgardbrewhouse]

Homegrown Hops 2019

First Gold is sprouting up spurred on by this year’s milder winter/spring, followed quickly by my good old Fuggles too. Thought it prudent to get the first section of the Fuggle Hop Trellis restrug and we’re ready to go for a new season of hop growing.

[midgardbrewhouse]

Hop Progress August

I’ve pretty much written off my Bramling Cross this year, the wind, heatwave and other conditions on that side of the house have wreaked it, so I’ll move it next year. But my 7 year old Fuggle is doing great as you can see, even a few hop cones forming already. Also my First Gold is doing great, lots and lots of hop burrs but now flowers yet.

[midgardbrewhouse]

Hop Progress - June

Bramling Cross has reached to top of my guides, my ladder doesn’t go any higher, lol. Luckily it now has the old fall pipe to climb up. 

Fuggles doing well as usual and First Gold looking a lot healthier this year. Better get planning a green hop beer for October. I’m thinking I might do a version of my big english Wolsey IPA that was so popular a few years back. Didn’t do a green hop last year so quite excited to get that unique flavour back in a beer.

[midgardbrewhouse]

Allotment Hops Update

I’ve now got a basic trellis up on the allotment, we’ll see how well it works this year, I may revise the design. So far heavy winds have blown the string all over the place but I hope it’s a little more stable once the hops get growing up. With them being in such an exposed area and only in their second year they aren’t the largest yet, no where near my Fuggles at home, but at least I can now leave them to it with somewhere to grow.

[midgardbrewhouse]

Allotment Hops - March 2017

Last weekend I finally got around to clearing up the allotment and preparing my First Gold and Bramling Cross for their second year. They were already poking through the horse manure so it was rather pressing that I get them protected from the pesky rabbits. So now I’ve done that and installed phase1 of the hop trellis, the 3 large posts. Next I’ll be wiring them up similar to my trellis at home. Also new North Yorkshire flag flying high!

[midgardbrewhouse]

First Hopdate of 2022

First Gold is the first up this year. After having hardly a single cone last year hopefully it'll perform better for 2022. Lets hope for a decent spring.

[midgardbrewhouse]

First Gold Failure

The bad news is all this First Gold is just leaves this year. There's a handful of hops on there but not really even enough to bother cutting it down.

Not sure what happened here but I still have some of last years harvest so it's not too much of a disaster. Plenty of other homegrown hops to choose from.

It also sounds like the First Gold harvest has been poor with a few other people in the North, I’m putting it down to the weather. We'll see how they do next year.