homemade hops dryer

[ipaisay]

I have been growing hops for 4 years now and have not had great results drying them. I think growing them is the easiest part, but drying them and I mean a lot of them is tough. I live on the humid east coast and was curious if anyone has had good luck drying their hops. What I would like to know is how long, what temp, does anyone have designs or any ideas on building a "cheap" hop dehydrator?

[HopRunner]

I planted a lot of hops over the last couple of years. I expect this years crop to be big enough to hold me through the winter.

No I don't have any "plans' yet but I have a food dehydrator that I am going to disassemble and insert into the base of a large wooden box. I am going to build shelves with screen bottoms that slide in and out. Should be fairly straight forward. Warm air in from the bottom and vented out the top.

I have a few months to get it done to be ready for this years crop.

[Nate Diggler]

You don't need to dry them that much... I just spead them out on a large window screen and let a fan blow on them overnight, then bag them, squeeze as much air out as possible, and freeze them. Removing oxygen is probably more critical than removing moisture.

[budrockdiesel]

Where is 0006?
I know he has dried some and I think he has pics...

[NHBrewer]

What I do is take a window screen or two suspended from some boxes or something and close them in a room with a de-hydrater then run that until the stems are pretty brittle. Then vac seal and freeze. This method takes a day or two depending on the quantity I am using. BTW this is the same method one might use to dry some Cousin cones if one were into that type of thing

Chris

[budrockdiesel]

I thought it was 0006 that had done it but cant find it. I had seen someone use a window screen, and a AC filter. They sandwiched the hops in the middle and taped a box fan to the filter. I thought that it looked simple, cheap, and affective.

[triple-oh-six]

I have pics posted somewhere, can't find them to easy using my ppc, I'll find them when I get home.
Basically it's just a box fan with a few ac filters bungee'd to it with the hops sandwiched in between.
It's worked great for the past 2 years. I just leave the fan on med for about 24hrs, makes the house smell awesome (the wife doesn't think so though)
Cost me about $15 for the fan and $4 or $5 for the filters..

[triple-oh-six]

Found it:

This is what I use
Straight from Alton Brown



I sandwich cones between the filters about 3 rows deep at max then bungee to a $7 box fan.
Then I put another filter on the input.

here's the thread posting.php?mode=quote&f=4&p=100825