Hops harvest - commercial
Hops harvest is quite complex and labour intense: the umbels must be picked from the vines without breaking them or adding too much stem and leaf to the yield.
For a long time, this was purely manual work and many people flocked to the cultivation areas to earn some money during the harvest weeks. This time is often romanticized today, but it was exhausting and full of privations.
Today hop is harvested by machine, but the effort is still enormous. The physical and mental strain during harvest time is also a challenge
Hops harvester
Freshly harvested cones
Dried and packed hops cones
In addition to the high financial investments for the short term use of machines for only a few weeks and the high risk of destroying the annual work through mistakes, it is also up to the hop grower to catch the right harvest time for the cultivated varieties.
The correct harvest time of the individual varieties is not fixed on a certain date. Rather, the course of the weather during the vegetation period and the place of cultivation (latitude) also play a certain role here. The table shows the harvest window of the hop varieties at the Hallertau site. For more southern cultivation areas (Tettnang), for example, this window usually starts about 5 days earlier, for more northern cultivation areas correspondingly later.
Harvesting times for different varieties
For a long time, this was purely manual work and many people flocked to the cultivation areas to earn some money during the harvest weeks. This time is often romanticized today, but it was exhausting and full of privations.
Today hop is harvested by machine, but the effort is still enormous. The physical and mental strain during harvest time is also a challenge
Hops harvester
Freshly harvested cones
Dried and packed hops cones
In addition to the high financial investments for the short term use of machines for only a few weeks and the high risk of destroying the annual work through mistakes, it is also up to the hop grower to catch the right harvest time for the cultivated varieties.
The correct harvest time of the individual varieties is not fixed on a certain date. Rather, the course of the weather during the vegetation period and the place of cultivation (latitude) also play a certain role here. The table shows the harvest window of the hop varieties at the Hallertau site. For more southern cultivation areas (Tettnang), for example, this window usually starts about 5 days earlier, for more northern cultivation areas correspondingly later.
Harvesting times for different varieties
