I can’t speak for other home hop growers. However, I doubt that any commercial can focus the attention on their fields that I can on my forty five hop plants.
Here are a few of the differences that I am aware of:
• My entire hop field is covered with between 4”-6” inches of composted manure each winter that provides ample fertilization. I do not need to use chemical fertilizers.
• I stock dozens of Preying Mantises colonies, each spring to provide natural insect control. These Mantises, keep all of my hop plants and garden insect-free with no chemicals. The result is a bug-free hop harvest without the use of any chemicals.
• Each plant is checked daily for its watering needs. On hot days, the plants get more water, on cool days, watering is either reduced or eliminated. My plants are never water-logged or kept too dry.
• My hop harvest last for at least two months. I daily “cherry-pick” only big hops, at the peak of their ripeness. Hops that are immature are left for later picking. I discard any sun-burned, wind damaged, overripe, or otherwise flawed hops. Additionally, hop trellises are ideal landing spots for birds. Each and every hop that I pick is visually checked for bird crap. Each and every hop I keep is perfect.
• I never have leaves or stems, weeds, twine or other garbage in my hops.
• I pick, vacuum seal and freeze all of my hops within 15 minutes of picking. Nothing is lost during the processing of my hops. When I open a frozen package of my frozen-fresh hops, they smell as pungent and aromatic as the moment that they were picked. None of the volatile aromatic character of my hops is lost to drying.
• My hops are kept frozen from the hour that they were picked to the minute that they are in the kettle or keg.
There simply is no way a commercial operation can focus such attention to detail on thousands of acres of hops that I can on my forty five plants. Commercial operations cannot hand pick, only the ripe hops and discard damaged or otherwise unwholesome hops.
Your commercial hops have been harvested when most of them are ripe, but many are either under or over ripe. Lots of them are covered with bugs or bird crap. Some of them have been sunburned or are damaged on the bine. They have been hauled out of the fields, hung up, and mechanically picked, transported by conveyor or screw auger and dried with 140 degree kilns. They have been baled, pelletized and trucked unrefrigerated all around the country. They have been repackaged perhaps a couple of times.
These hops underwent this processing not to make them taste better than the moment they were picked. Simply, there is no other way that a commercial operation can deliver hops from the field, to your kettle any other way.
To say that commercial hops are somehow better, or even equal to homegrown hops, is equivalent to saying store bought tomatoes are better than homegrown, or dried basil is better than homegrown fresh.
I cannot vouch for everybody, but my hops are better than any commercial hops that you can buy. If you think that hops smell good when you open a plastic package, you should try picking them and smelling them fresh.