Grow Your Own?

Has anyone here thought about growing their own hops?  There's a house in Calgary here out back of one of the better brew-pubs that has a bunch of hops growing up the back fence in the alley so I know it's possible here.

I've been giving some thought to seeing if they could be planted in place of other more traditional climbing vines in my yard.

Has anyone else tried to grow them?  Any thoughts or advice?

I've heard this can be profitable, and I also have an area wherein it could be done. I live in New York State, where a lot of wine vinyards exist. So I think hops could be grown here. I haven't looked in to it seriously, I always expected the purchase price of the seeds or plants to be too much, but your question has made me wonder. I'm going to look around and pay attention to this thread. Interesting idea!

I already started searching and found:

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/hallertau-hop-rhizome.html

I think I'll order one and try it!

Welllllllll - not so promising. I actually tried to order it but it said shipping was not available, I'd have to pick it up in Minnesota. That's a problem. Not sure what the issue is here so I'll call them tomorrow, and keep looking.

I grew hops when I lived in southern Wisconsin with great success.  I bought some rhizomes from a local shop, planted them in the ground, and away they went.  The only maintainance I did was guide them up the rope I installed on my deck.  I didn't get much off of them the first year, but by the second growing season I had more hops than I could use.  

A big challenge was figuring out how to dry two paper grocery bags full of wet hops before they spoiled.  The best I did was creating a big platform made out of window screen and letting them air dry.  Nonetheless, space was a challange here.  Once dry, I vacuum sealed the bags, threw them in the freezer, and used them as necessary.  

Most folks say to reserve homegrown for aroma (late addition), primarily because it is hard to estimate bitterness if used at the beggining of the boil.  I say screw it - I'd rather have a slightly less/more hoppy brew made entirely with my own hops than take the cautious road, particularly if I am not brewing for competition.

Thanks chabeck -  I tried ordering rhizomez earlier this week as a result of this post, but something on their end went wrong and the order crashed. I got busy and forgot about it, but now I'm reminded. I really want to do this so I'm going to keep searching. Do you have source to recommend?

freshops.com is a quality source and where most of the rhizomes you see in your local stores come from.

Thanks. The garden is setup...

OK. freshops.com sent me rhizomes in the spring, and I planted them without much ceremony. The total cost was about $9 US and so I figured "what the fXXX?" In the ground they went after a short tear-up of the surrounding grass and time passed.

I now have three diffent hop plants growing. I'm such a bozu that the labels I put on them in the spring have vanished and I'm not sure what they are. I'm sure the most successful of them all is Cascade hops. The others are more difficult to grow European varieties, I'll look it up and tell you later what they are.

Anyway, only the Cascade hops responded this year. Freshops.com says that for most hops the first year is just a settling-in period. The following are the pictures of the Cascade hops.

Anybody know when these suckers are ready to pick?

Wow, nice!  I wonder if I could pull them off in this climate.  As I said, I have seen them growing here.

Any plans for them?

No. Want them? I probably have about an ounce of unknown quality. I grew them but know nothing about them yet.

Of course, I'm hoping to find a very cheap source of barley malt. It bother the beegeebers out of me that to make beer costs as much as to buy it. Something wrong there. I want a way out of the system.

Moving to Canada's one option.  It costs way more to buy it here....