So, frustration ensues. I've been drying the centennial and cascade for 4 days now and the chinook for 3, I am still at 30% moisture across the board. I identified the problem immediately last night when there was no longer stratification through the oast stacks: humidity.
The temps have been in the high eighties but the the dew point has been in the 70s, it's muggy and the hops are approaching a limit. Worse than that, they didn't dry last night. It's so foggy and dew laden at night that when I reweighed a tray this morning, not one gram different after 12 hours of fans pushing fog over them. GRRRR.
I don't know what exact degradation I am causing with the extended drying time, but I'm trying to stay calm about it.
Once the temps came back up, they dropped another 9%. I ran some through the dehydrator and another bunch through the microwave that confirmed my other numbers that I'm still around 30% and thus not ready to package.
In a last ditch effort to accomplish something during the 12 hour over night period, I moved the oast stacks into the garage and rigged up a room AC unit I'm a window to cut the humidity.
I briefly entertained notions of convincing SWMBO to let me bring the stacks indoors, but then I found that either 90F or 30% moisture is deadly to aphids because, surprise! (See picture below). Turns out that if you didn't see aphids all season, they are probably still there. That pile of stuff on the ground ain't lupilin. I'm just glad the little fuggers fit through the mesh when they tumble to their death.