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Growing hops in the Hopen style

Hopen is a company specialized in the collaborative creation of a French hop industry. Hopen’s mission is to enable farmers who want to diversify to produce hops in France for brewing.

To do this, Hopen produces hop plants in the Loiret and supplies them to farmers so that they can spread and grow them.

Farmers are not the only collaborators of Hopen since we have developed a partnership to also offer hop plants. Cascade, Chinook, Centennial… Growing hops to brew your own beer is now possible.

Although of different origins, each hop comes from varieties selected for their adaptability to French soils. While they retain their main taste characteristics, they also develop distinctive and typical aromas of the French terroirs. Thus you can give a unique twist to your beers with your own hop plants.

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How do hop plants look like?

• Container: 1 L plastic pot.
• Size: Pot height 13 cm.
• Foliage: Aerial part + or - leafy depending on the season.
• Order preparation & delivery frequency: weekly.

What varieties of hops are available?

• Cascade
• Galena
• Cashmere
• Glacier
• Centennial
• Mount Hood
• Chinook
• Nugget
• Comet
• Perle
• Columbus
• Saaz
• Crystal
• Sorachi Ace
• Golding (Bramling)
• Willamette
• Fuggle
• Zeus

Growing hops in your garden

Growing hops in your garden is not that difficult. Moreover, if you don’t use them for brewing, the hop plants will serve perfectly as decoration. As it is a climbing plant, you can decorate a wall or a fence and if you are handy, with guides you can even make tipis. To know when to plant hops, refer to the variety. That said, many are planted in March at the beginning of spring.

How to plant hops?

Depending on the composition of your soil, you may need some potting soil or sand (for clay soils). We also recommend mulching or BRF (type of crushed hemp or cocoa shells as it will limit evaporation and watering frequency). And finally, guides (rope, reed… it’s up to you). Hops like rich and well-drained soils with a partial shade to full sun exposure.

1. Moisturize your potted plants well.

2. Dig a deep hole and space your plants about one meter apart. The chosen location should benefit from an exposure of at least 6 to 8 hours in direct sunlight every day. If these conditions are met, the plants will do very well even on balconies!

For potted plants, the larger your container, the more the plant will thrive.

Your hops have small spikes along their vines (and not hooks like those of ivy or tendrils on the vine), it will be important at the beginning to guide them on a support in the clockwise direction.

If you choose to put some wire, make a big knot at the end that you will insert at the bottom of the hole. The line must be tight, but not too much to avoid breaking.

3. Mix your soil with potting soil and sand if there is too much clay or limestone. Hops like well-drained soils with a sandy-loam profile.

4. You only have to fill your hole up to leave a margin of the size of the pot, plus five centimeters to cover them. Place your hop plants there, cover them with soil.

5. Water the hop plants well and spread mulch all around.

6. Monitor the growth of the vines and guide them around their support. To put them on the wire, wrap the vines of the plants around a wire / a rope in a clockwise direction, so that they can climb!

When the vines reach about two meters, remove the leaves at the base of the plant to avoid diseases or other aggressors from the soil.

The flowers will not be long in coming as soon as the days start to shorten. The flowering will then spread over 2 to 3 months.

7. The harvest arrives at the end of summer, between September and October. You can recognize ripe hops by the lupulin they contain

between their bracts (yellow powder between the petals of the flowers/cones) and their slightly yellowish hue. The cones crunch

slightly like newspaper or cigarette paper. Do not harvest them too early (when they are very green and fresh) as they would not

be very loaded with essential oils.

At this stage, congratulations! You can harvest the hops by cutting the base of the vine and pulling it. You will only have to remove the cones and sort them.

8. For drying, why not use a dehumidifier or a small homemade hop oven. Once dried, handle the cones gently to avoid losing the lupulin.

9. Vacuum pack your hops if you can and place them in the refrigerator or freezer for better preservation.

Order your hop plants

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ATTENTION: DELIVERY ONLY TO METROPOLITAN FRANCE