Drying hops question

[autonomist3k]

I'm drying my hops right now and they've only been dying for a day, I swept under the racks right now and all this lupilin was on the garage floor, is it expected to lose a little spring drying? Or are they so dry that it's falling off?

I weighed them earlier and they are 40% of their original weight right now, but they seem pretty dry to me.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1438997918.142276.jpg

 

[Calder]

I'm a first year grower too, and I have another question for the collective about this. Should we be putting something under the hops, and collecting all this goodness?

 

[autonomist3k]

If this was weed I'd say yes, for hops I have no idea LOL.

 

[autonomist3k]

That could be interesting though, save all this stuff that falls off the hops and throw it in an IPA after fermentation is done.

 

[autonomist3k]

I think I'm going to try that right now!

 

[day_trippr]

I've never seen anything like that in the five years I've been growing hops.
At the most, I might see a slight dusty film on the floor under my oast that if collected wouldn't fill a thimble - and most of that would be fragments of dried up styles and stigmas.

How many wet pounds were being dried? And how were they being dried?

Cheers!

 

[lgilmore]

Haven't had this experience either. How thick are you laying the hops to dry?

 

[autonomist3k]

About 3 lbs wet and here is a picture of my setup.View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1439051162.756053.jpg

I've been using a box fan for air circulation
It's not deep at all.

 

[GVH_Dan]

Sorry for the late response but this isn't terribly unusual. At the end of our season last year, I swept up about 10 pounds of lupulin and bracts...of course that was after drying ~20 acres of hops.

Some will fall out as a natural part of the drying process. The more agitation, especially towards the end of the drying cycle, the more will fall out. Its also sticky and you may need denatured alcohol to clean it up.

By the way, use that as fertilizer. I put about 30 lbs of hop dust on my garden this spring and we have 10' high sunflowers, tomatoes the size of softballs and green beans that could possibly make it to the clouds.