I started home brewing a few years ago, then found out that my brother has been brewing for more than 10 years. He sent me some hops rhizomes. For now, they're in pots, until I decide where they'll be permanently.

Anybody else growing hops?

I have 3 plants that I've neglected over the past few years. I started them in pots with the intention of eventually putting them in the ground...guess where they still are? Only one of the three came back healthy this year but it's looking good...put on about 2 feet of growth in the past week or so. I've never gotten any hops from the plants, however. What variety did you plant?

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I've got one each of Cascade, Centennial, Nugget and Perle. I probably would have picked Saaz instead of Perle, but I'm not going to complain since they were a gift. He just surprised me with them after I asked if he could bring some rhizomes from his plants to a family reunion this summer (he said that would be a bad time to plant them). He did ask me to send him some rhizomes when they're to that stage. I read something from the USU extension service that said you can bury part of a bine in the fall and get starts the following spring, so I may do that (it would be a lot faster than waiting for it to get established enough to get a rhizome).

Some of my friends and I grew hops in med school for beer brewing. They are quite impressive plants. We had some Cascades and those thing would grow a foot in a day. We trained them up some cables to the second floor window and could easily have gone to the roof peak if we could have run the wires up there. We only grew two plants in the backyard of a small row house, but they very nearly took over the yard. It was great fun, but my advice is to make sure you know what you are getting into with them. We grew them for 3 years and when we moved, we took them out as best we could as we didn't think the next people would want them. They each had a giant taproot that went down at least 6 feet and was a good 2-3 inches in diameter. I wouldn't be surprised if they are still there despite being dug up.

Beer brewing is great fun. We tried malting grains (that was an epic failure). We just didn't have enough space. We were able to maintain about 20 strains of yeast in one of the campus labs. It is amazing how much the specific yeast used can affect the taste, and if you can maintain cultures it is worth it. Much harder to do without a lab with good freezers and incubators though.