Hops belong to the hemp family.
There are three types of hops found in nature:
- Ordinary.
- Heart-shaped.
- Japanese.
Common hops are used in production. In another way it is also called khmil, khmelitsa or bitterweed. It has sedative properties on a par with passionflower and motherwort.
Everyone knows that hops are used in the brewing industry, but these are not all areas of its application. It is widely used in medicine, pharmaceuticals, cosmetology, the perfume industry, for bakeries and canning. 15% of hop stems consist of fiber, which is suitable for making rope, burlap, yarn and paper.
Characteristics of hops:
- Maximum length separate stem hops - 5-7 meters, this climbing plant, covered with hooked spines.
- Females produce dense cones, which consist of 20-60 flowers, and male inflorescences are leafless panicles; light pollen from them is carried over a distance of up to 3 km.
- The life cycle of the plant lasts up to 20 years, in rare cases more. The plant is distributed in the European part of the CIS, Eastern and Western Siberia, and the Caucasus.
- You can grow it at home in any part of the planet; hops do well even in dusty areas of the city; they are completely unpretentious.
Collected hop cones can be used in food purposes. They are rich in vitamins B1, B2, B6, PP, they contain valeric and hop tannic acids, flavonoids, ash, hormones, essential oils, lupulin, alkaloid humulin and a large number of macro- and microelements.
The leaves and stems contain large amounts of vitamin C.
Hops are added to preparations to produce the following effects:
- Anti-inflammatory.
- Painkiller.
- Anticonvulsant.
- Bactericidal.
- Antiulcer.
- Antiallergic.
- Hyposensitizing.
- Capillary-strengthening.
Hops are used to improve digestive and of cardio-vascular system. Hop infusion is effective for insomnia, nervous excitement, oncology, diathesis, gastritis, ulcers, cholecystitis, nephritis, cystitis, atherosclerosis and hypertension.
It is forbidden for pregnant women to take hop-containing products, as the plant is poisonous.
Hops love moist, fertile soils. IN natural conditions it grows in oak and ash forests, hiding behind bushes and in ravines. Soils should be rich in humus.
Don’t be afraid to grow hops in the city near busy highways; this will not affect the quality of the hops.
Basic conditions for growing hops on the balcony:
- Large pot (since hops have large roots).
- Installing a support around which the shoots will curl.
- Regular watering every 3 weeks.
- Annual pruning of shoots.
In autumn, yellowed cones are cut off and dried. They can then be used to make medicinal and cosmetic recipes.
If you need a large number of plants for your own needs or for sale, the question arises: how to grow hops over a large area:
- For planting, you need to find a sunny place, the site must have good drainage. A support for growth is installed near almost every plant. Ideal place – South side Houses. In addition, hops have high decorative qualities.
- The soil should be loose, with a pH of 6.5-8. You can lay out a layer of sand to a depth of 30 cm. Each hole is made at a distance of more than 1 meter from one another. Compost or soil for seedlings is laid out at the bottom of the hole.
- The rhizome, that is, the creeping underground stem, deepens 5-10 centimeters into horizontal position, roots point down. Now the soil can be compacted, the hole covered with hay and watered generously.
- The upper part of the plant dies off every winter, and the perennial part, the rhizome, develops underground. Hop roots can withstand harsh winters.
- When the first shoots appear, they need to be cut off after two weeks. Only the strongest shoots remain, in the amount of 3 pieces. Staking is carried out when an individual hop vine has grown to 40 cm.
- Hops grow very quickly; in good spring weather, the shoot can lengthen by 15 cm.
During active growth It is advisable to add a large amount of nitrogen. This is not a mandatory procedure for normal development Compost will be enough, but nitrogen will save the plant if the leaves suddenly begin to turn yellow or become smaller.
The plant is watered frequently, but the water should not stagnate. It is advisable that water does not fall on the leaves.
To make the cones ripen faster, the plant is sprayed with a 40% solution of ammonium nitrate. If alfalfa weevil or fleas appear, the shoots are treated with chlorophos. From spider mite 40% phosphamide will help get rid of it; 80% polycarbacin or 80% zineb, 80% cuprozan will cope with other diseases. Viruses can be destroyed using zinc sulfate.
Common hops reproduce in several ways:
- Dividing the bush.
- By dividing the rhizome.
- Cuttings.
- By layering.
- Seeds.
Propagation by seeds is used less frequently, but this the method will work, if you need to sow a large area.
To propagate hops vegetatively, you need to wait until spring, until the shoots begin to grow, dig up the rhizome and cut it into several parts. The result will be several cuttings. On each one, full-fledged kidneys should be clearly visible.
In the first year, the cuttings are already ready for independent development, so grow them in the garden or plant them permanent place– the choice is up to the gardener.
Propagation by seeds is also not difficult:
- It is better to grow seedlings at home by sowing seeds in bowls.
- When the seedlings appear, they require the same care as any indoor plants.
- Next, the sprouts are transferred to the soil and grown.
- Only in the second year will the seedlings begin to grow quickly; in the first year they will reach small sizes.
- When propagating by seeds, there is a risk of obtaining a large number of males.
- Because of this, seedlings are planted close to each other, and when the fruiting period begins, males are isolated.
In order for the plant to develop well, landing hole lay 3 kg of rotted manure.
Amateur gardeners grow several individuals, but if there is a need to plant an entire plantation, then it is important to maintain the distance between the rows and bushes. Between hops it will be 1 meter, and between rows 3 meters.
You can collect the first cones already in the first year if you have received hops vegetative propagation, but the harvest will be small. Full-fledged cones will grow in the second year. But plants that grew from seeds will bear their first fruits only after 4 years.
Cones can be collected from mid-August to mid-September.
The buds at this moment should be at the initial stage of ripening, so do not delay. It’s even better to calculate the period when there are several days left before the buds ripen. This can be determined by the color, it will be greenish yellow. If the color is bright green, it means the buds are not yet ripe; if there is a brown tint, it means they are overripe. There is no point in collecting cones with protruding scales, since they contain few seeds and lupulin.
The cone is torn off along with the stalks; if the cone is without a stalk, it will fall off during the drying process.
Growing hops is not difficult, it does not require special conditions and knowledge. hops can be used in various fields: medicine, cooking, cosmetology.
More information can be found in the video.
COMMON HOPS
Almost all of us instantly associate the common hop plant with the epithet “hoppy,” but it is used not so much by brewers as by masters of poetry. Intoxicating aromas turn the heads of lovers, evoke philosophical thoughts about the meaning of life, touch, delight, conquer, bewitch, enchant. But in fact, that same ordinary hop has almost no odor, and its appearance It’s also not particularly charming, although it does have some zest of its own. Photo: Common hop (Humulus lupulus)
origin of name
Common hops grow both in the wild and carefully cultivated wherever it is not too hot. You can even meet him in North Africa. No one can say for sure where the name “hop” came from; they only assume that it is either Slavic, or Chuvash, or German, or someone else. Each of these peoples has a word that sounds like “hops” and denotes some of its characteristic feature. For example, among the Germans it is “hummeln”, that is, “groping, feeling”, as if crawling and entwining everything that comes in its way, and in Latin it is “humus”, which means “earth”, a plant spreading along the ground . In Russia, common hops are found everywhere, with the exception of regions with a very harsh climate. We call this plant differently - hop flower, beer flower, wild grapes, bitterweed, beer cone.
Botanical description plants
Common hops can be described as unusually tenacious, creeping, twining, and very tenacious. This plant has interesting feature- in the fall, its entire above-ground part dies off, and in the spring, new shoots develop from the overwintered rhizomes with fantastic speed, stretching to a length of more than 6-7 meters. These herbaceous vines grow literally before our eyes and in just a month they are able to climb several meters up the supports, weave around a fence or gazebo. Moreover, it wraps around supports and obstacles only clockwise. Its stems themselves are hollow inside, tetrahedral. The rhizome is also long, and also creeping, only underground. Common hops are attractive with their rich green leaves, a bit like grape leaves and creating thick veils. Interestingly, its lower leaves have three or five lobes, and the upper ones, slightly smaller in size, are solid, similar to hearts.
Not everyone knows that the cones, thanks to which common hops are so valued, are female flowers, more precisely, cone-shaped inflorescences. The flowers themselves are hidden under the scales. They, as expected, have a pistil, with the help of which fruit ovaries are formed in all plants.
In addition, nature has endowed these unusual flowers with special glands that contain the substance lupulin, which has the richest chemical composition, thanks to which common hops are used in medicine and brewing. And here male flowers The plants are completely inconspicuous, looking like small green panicles, but they cope with their role of pollinating females and producing fruits perfectly. Common hops belong to the group of dioecious plants (male and female), that is, in order to get fruits, they need to be planted side by side. Hops bloom in the second half of summer, closer to August, and its small fruit-nuts ripen in about a month.
Just a little history
Despite its modest beauty, common hops have long been honored by many peoples. What impressed people most of all was the plant’s extraordinary endurance and vitality, its rapid growth and ability in the spring to seem to rise from the dead. Thanks to this, even in the times of paganism, common hops became a symbol of fertility, well-being, resilience and vitality, and later they added flexibility, wisdom, and the ability to cement a union. Therefore, in the old days, newlyweds were showered with hop cones, and huts were decorated with twigs on holidays and weekdays, and girls wove them into wreaths.
Photo: Common hop, vine leaves
The first historical mention of hops dates back to the reign of Prince Vladimir. The oath when he concluded peace with the Bulgarians states that if it is suddenly broken, the hop will sink and the stone will float.
In that era, our ancestors had a very bright ritual deity Yarilo, that is, a symbol of fertility. It turns out that common hops were often present with this Yarilo in the same company, it was even called Yar-Khmel. With his participation, ritually of course, our glorious ancestors organized festivities in honor of harvested, sang songs until the morning, danced around the fires. They had a belief that the guy or girl who Yar-Khmel looked at would definitely fall in love. Hops were also favored by players who were not afraid to risk their fortunes. They firmly believed that the plant, symbolizing prosperity and prosperity, would definitely help them become rich. And ordinary hops “saved” honest people from the machinations of witches, ghouls and other evil spirits, so hop cones were always carried in the pockets of clothes, in boots and bast shoes, and of course, hung from front door.
But our ancestors did not use hops as the main component of beer - they did not know that it was an assistant in this matter. In general, the ancient Slavs drank little (according to historical data), they used intoxicating drinks mainly on holidays, so they saw nothing wrong with glorifying a plant that intoxicates the head. Later, when these almost fabulous traditions were broken and people began to drink a lot, common hops fell into the category of plants given to people by devilish powers. It must be said that the ancient Romans and even the wise Greeks, who preferred grape wine and relegated beer to the role of an unworthy drink, were biased towards hops. The Bible also mentions hops as an unseemly plant, because at the instigation of the insidious serpent it helped to drug Noah and destroy his ark. But the ancient Jews, on the contrary, it was thanks to beer with hops that they saved themselves from a terrible disease - leprosy, which was once a real punishment from God.
Hops and beer
Be that as it may, ordinary hops, having lost their significance in Rus' as an aid to fertility and a protector from evil spirits, gained new recognition as a component of the drink beloved by many - beer. They cooked it in Rus', as they say, even under Tsar Gorokh, but they didn’t know how to preserve it for a long time. That is, it was only a seasonal drink. Only when the ancient brewers came up with the idea of adding ordinary hops to beer recipes did things start to improve. Now this plant is used everywhere in brewing. It turns out there are many varieties of hops. The type, strength, taste and aroma of beer depends on which one is used in recipes. So, there are Alpha hops, Aroma hops, Bitter hops and others. It is added to both hot and cold wort, which also affects the quality of the final product. Nowadays they have already learned how to make extracts and compressed concentrated tablets from hops, which are increasingly used in breweries, gradually replacing the original raw material - hop cones.
Photo: Common hop, female cone-shaped inflorescences
Hops in landscape design
Gardeners and summer residents use common hops not for making beer, but for decorating their plots. This amazing and energetically bright plant can extravagantly decorate a gazebo, weave a fence, or cover an unseemly place, for example, a barn or a garbage dump. The only inconvenience it can cause is that in the fall you will have to remove its dried vines to make room for new ones that emerge from the ground in the spring.
Common hops, planting and care
Anyone who is planning to own hops should get acquainted with simple rules caring for him. It is not difficult for him to find a suitable place. It can be partial shade or a bright corner, but the sun should not be hot there all day. The soil for hops is loamy, neutral, slightly alkaline or slightly acidic. Of course, on fertile soils Common hops grow better. It loves moisture very much, so it needs watering, but you can’t overwater the hops, since an excess of moisture can be detrimental for it. Elements of plant care include building supports for it if it is planted away from them, weeding and fertilizing. As a rule, ordinary hops do not cause any special difficulties. Planting and caring for it can be done even by those who do not understand gardening at all. This plant is so unpretentious that it can grow without any care. In addition, it is quite frost-resistant. Its rhizomes tolerate winters well with temperatures down to -30 degrees. The only difficulty that can await lovers of green hops is the super growth of its rhizomes. To prevent the plant from turning into nasty weed, you need to use available materials (pieces of slate, bricks, etc.) to create a barrier in the ground for its roots.
Reproduction
Photo: Common hop, fragment of creeping rhizome
An unpretentious, unobtrusive beauty, the common hop, planting and caring for which is so simple, and does not cause difficulties in propagation. This is most often done by vegetative methods. It is most rational to use fragments of rhizomes with living healthy buds, and they are separated without digging the mother plant out of the ground. In the spring, as soon as the plant wakes up and the first shoots appear from the ground, use a shovel, but carefully, to isolate small pieces and plant them in their favorite place.
You can also propagate common hops by rhizome cuttings, which are harvested before the sap begins to flow. The rhizome is dug up, divided into fragments with living buds and planted again where they have a place. Anyone who wants can grow these cuttings in a separate bed, and transfer them to permanent residence in the fall. By the way, hops live for about 30 years.
A very simple way to propagate common hops by layering. For planting and care in this case, I have the following technology: the selected vine is tilted to the ground somewhere in the middle of summer, pinned and sprinkled with the same soil. The structure is left in this position until spring, when it will be necessary to dig up the resulting new rhizome and plant it in a favorite place.
There are cases when you can only propagate hops by seeds, for example, when you want to grow unusual variety, or when large plantations are planted at once. The seed propagation method is also simple, but it is better to start it in a greenhouse or at home. To do this, containers (boxes, bowls, whatever you have) are filled with prepared soil and watered. The care for seedlings is the same as for any flower. The grown plants are transferred to open ground and care for them, just like adult hops. Common hops will begin to delight you with their rapid growth in the second year, and cones will appear on it in another couple of years. Not a very convenient growing feature by seed method is that in the end you can get too many male plants, that is, you will be left without cones. To beat this situation, experienced hop growers plant hop seedlings closer to each other, and then remove the excess infertile plants.
How to properly plant common hops in open ground
In order for young seedlings to develop faster (seedlings grown from seeds, or fragments of rhizomes), in the fall, where the place is chosen for hops, they dig holes up to 50 cm deep. They are half filled with rotted organic matter (preferably manure), add soil on top and leave everything this is until spring. During planting, the seedling is placed in ready-made holes, covered with soil, compacted, and watered. If there is no difference, male or female plants are needed, and also, when the “sex” of the seedling is already known, they need to be placed at a distance of about a meter from each other, and the row spacing should be maintained at about 3 meters. If you plan to dig through seedlings, you can make holes more often.
Photo: Common hop perfectly camouflages fences and creates hedge
Diseases and pests
Common hops withstand weather conditions, but suffer from some pests. It is especially bothered by aphids, nematodes and other leaf-eating small things, which are best combated with insecticides.
Unfortunately, common hops are also susceptible to plant diseases. This:
- powdery mildew;
-downy mildew;
- Verticillium wilt of hops;
-fusarium;
-root rot;
-bacterial cancer;
-mosaics (hop, chlorotic, arabis);
- curliness.
All this fungal diseases. They develop in conditions favorable for fungal spores weather conditions, incorrect agricultural techniques for growing hops, vegetative ways reproduction (many fungi, such as root rot, cancer, fusarium, enter the plant through wounds on the rhizome) and lead to a decrease in yield, and bacterial cancer and root rot can cause the death of the entire plant.
You can tell that common hops are sick by looking at the spots on the leaves. white plaque(at powdery mildew), withering of shoots, their weakening, others unusual for hops external modifications. Diseases must be dealt with appropriately chemicals, plus strictly follow all the rules for caring for the plant.
Photo: Common hop at flowering time, female plant
Varieties
Breeders do not ignore common hops. Thanks to their efforts, about a hundred were bred interesting varieties with green, red and red-green vines. Red varieties are considered the best. Their advantage is the early ripening of the crop, but the disadvantage is that their cones open very quickly and lose lupulin. Green varieties are late-ripening and easier to harvest, but the lupulin in their buds has a less subtle aroma and lower quality. Both red and green varieties exist regionally and selectively.
Here are just a few of them:
"Brewer". This variety belongs to the average growing season. He will please lush greenery about 4 months. “Brewer” copes well with frosts in the growth phase and frosts in the resting phase, with drought and prolonged heavy rains, and is resistant to many diseases. Its yield is average, but the buds have a refined aroma, for which this variety is used with pleasure in brewing. The leaves of “Pivovar” are again medium in size, slightly wavy, but if this variety is planted for the purpose of intertwining barriers, it will not form a particularly lush crown.
"Triumph". This variety is equally good for creating landscape designs, and for the production of delicious beer. Its cones are medium in size and contain alpha acid.
The following varieties are also popular: “ Gaydamatsky", "Alta"(alpha acids in it are up to 12%, which is much more than other hops), "Slav", "Clone-18"(alpha acids only up to 4%), "Zagrava", "Miss it".
The value of each variety is determined by yield, uniformity of cones, ripening, structure of cones, lupulin content, color and aroma. Less valuable are varieties in which the cones are formed unevenly, ripen poorly, have a small amount of lupulin, spotting and multiple traces of pests.
We have already written about growing hops. But I decided to express my view on this issue. How I succeed is up to you to judge. I want to write about it, and you can decide whether it worked. So... Hops are a vine with fragrant soft cones and can be perennial or annual. Hops are mainly used for landscaping gardens and personal plots, so it is planted along fences, near arches, decorating gazebos, walls of houses, etc.
Apart from purely decorative properties, hop cones are used in folk medicine as a painkiller and nerve sedative. The plant is used for gastritis, as an additional remedy in the treatment of kidneys, Bladder, colds, neuroses, etc. Prepared from hop flowers healing decoction, which are then used for stomach cancer and lung diseases. An infusion from the cones of the plant is also used externally for compresses and lotions for severe bruises and wounds, and is also used as a rub to reduce wrinkles on the face.
Many gardeners want to grow this plant in their garden, while others do not know how to get rid of it. The fact is that hops are very tenacious and grow strongly. It takes a lot of work to somehow contain its spread throughout the entire area. In this regard, growing hops from seeds is best done for annual varieties.
Let's talk about this useful and very beautiful ornamental plant in more detail, we will learn about the rules of caring for it, we will find out how best to propagate it, including by seeds.
What do you need to know before boarding?
This vine prefers to grow in partial shade, in quiet, calm corners of the garden, where it will be protected from cold northern winds. For the plant to develop and grow well, it needs moist soil, preferably loam. You need to prepare for planting in the fall. Dig holes and place them in equal amount earth and manure.
Hops should be planted in prepared holes in the spring. Planted either root suckers from adult plants, or divide their rhizomes and then plant them. As we have already said, you can also sow hop seeds.
Growing from seeds
So, as I already said, in the fall, dig holes or trenches for planting, which is better for planting seeds. Prepare the area for sowing protected from strong winds place. Dig the soil to a depth of at least 60 cm. Then apply fresh manure by 30 cm. If there is no manure, you can use complex mineral fertilizers. All preparatory activities complete it in the fall, as we will be planting the seeds in early spring when the soil is damp and difficult to dig.
Before sowing the seeds, they need to be stratified for several days (3-5), first in a warm place, and then at a cold temperature (up to +8 ° C). Then they are planted immediately in the prepared bed and sprinkled with earth. Just check the weather forecast so that the period of frost does not return, otherwise the seeds will freeze.
Once again I would like to remind you that from perennial varieties hops are almost impossible to get rid of. Therefore, it is best to use the seeds of annuals, or, as a last resort, plant hops where they can easily grow and take over new territories. Otherwise, even continuous herbicides will not help get rid of it. The fact is that they only act on aboveground part, but the underground part of the plant will produce more and more new numerous shoots.
On the other hand, if you plant perennial hops to decorate the walls of a residential building, a gazebo, or as a green hedge, you will not have to worry more about its propagation and planting. It will produce seeds and shoots and multiply on its own. Your task will only be to guide the new vines to the supports in time and tie them up so that they grow in in the right direction.
Rules of care
As we have already said, the plant feels best in partial shade. But it can also develop well in the sun. But only in this case will the hops be more susceptible to various diseases, including damage by insects.
Some time after planting, shoots with flexible stems will appear, which will gradually begin to weave; at this moment they need to be directed to pre-dug high perches or supports. Over the summer, the vines will rise to a height of 3-4 meters. If you need to stop growing, trim off the tops. This must be done before flowering begins, which begins in July-August. In one place, a plant can live up to 20 years, and sometimes more.
In winter, plants need to be earthed up so that they overwinter successfully. In spring, remove dried stems to prevent the plant from losing decorative qualities. Another 10-20 young shoots will grow from the rhizome. To prevent excessive growth, remove most of them, leaving only 4-5, the most developed, new vines.
It is best to propagate the plant using cuttings. The first year they are planted in beds for rooting, and then, when the next spring comes, planted in a permanent place. When the growing season begins, periodically weed and feed young plants with slurry for better growth and development.
When the vines have grown enough, direct them to a strong support and tie them with twine. Fruits - cones - will appear in the first year of planting. But best harvest you can only collect for the second and subsequent years.
From hop cones you can prepare decoctions, infusions and tinctures to treat the most various diseases(we talked about them above), you can rinse your hair for rapid growth and shine. You can take baths to improve the condition and beauty of your skin and much more. But this is a topic for another conversation.
Among all the herbaceous vines, our gardeners have long appreciated hops. It is distinguished by its unpretentiousness and excellent decorative effect. They have long known about medicinal properties hops Ancient recipes are still relevant today. In our dynamic age, this plant will gently help us all become more stress-resistant.
In terms of growth rate, hops have no equal! It seems to have been created for draping northern walls. This perennial herbaceous vine grows well in the shade. It is quite decorative, winter-hardy, and easily propagated. And the practical benefits of hops make it necessary to allocate large spaces for planting this vine in many countries (for example, the Czech Republic).
Our common hop is the longest herbaceous perennial temperate forests (only annuals are Japanese variety hops).
Growing hops
Hops are propagated by cuttings. Get planting material hops is not at all difficult. Ask the owner of the old curtain to cut a few cuttings. The cuttings should be 8–14 cm long with a well-filled core. This condition is satisfied by hop stems 1.5–2 cm thick, with 2–3 pairs of buds.
Unlike cuttings, for example, black currant or gooseberries, hop cuttings are completely buried in a groove to a depth of 15–20 cm in an inclined state: the upper end of the stem segment should be 4–5 cm higher than the lower one and located in the soil at a distance of 10 cm from the surface. The distance between the cuttings in the groove is 1 m. In the spring, after covering the cuttings with loose soil, the soil must be kept moist throughout the season. Shoots will appear in 10 days.
When the stems grow to half a meter, it’s time to tighten the supporting ropes, tying them to stakes driven into the ground. The shoots find support and cling to it with hooks, with which the stem is completely strewn, and with twigs, and even with the veins of leaves.
Hops is a dioecious plant: male flowers look like paniculate tassels, female ones - in the form of small cones, collected in inflorescences of 30–50 pieces.
Now you can observe the extraordinary qualities of this plant.
Moreover, this vine is a champion in growth speed; it grows by 30–40 cm, and sometimes by 70 cm, per day! The growth of the vine slows down during flowering. By the end of summer, the shoots will reach 8–10 m in length. The vine accumulates the strength for such rapid growth in the fall: when the stem begins to dry out in September, nutrients move to the rhizome, which stores them until spring. The rhizome lives for 20 years or more, growing in breadth and depth every year (in damp deciduous forests it eventually moves 10 m away from the stem!).
Now it’s time to show that hops are planted not so much for its decorative qualities, but for practical purposes.
Attitudes towards different-sex individuals among farmers are strikingly different. For female specimens, from time immemorial it has been caring and even bowing. And seeing the masculine flowering plant, owner in best case scenario tends to castrate all the inflorescences. On industrial plantations, if a male is among the female ones, it is destroyed in order to prevent pollination and fruit development. Well, just a vegetable nunnery! There were even special studies that showed that dry pollen from male hop flowers can spread air currents by 3 km!
The thing is that hops are grown for economic purposes for the sake of LUPULINA, contained in the pollen of female inflorescences. There is darkness in him biologically active substances: essential oils, resins, some alkaloids, tannins. It is this set that determines the value of hops as an agricultural crop.
This is where the main use of hops originates - brewing. The tannins contained in lupulin help brewers regulate the fermentation of the wort, and impart a piquant bitterness and aroma to the beer made from it, and persistent foam protects it from rapid souring. In short - it turns out the right beer!
Water and alcohol infusion on flowering hop cones have anti-inflammatory properties and help with diseases of the liver, bladder, and intestinal tract.
IN industrial scale hops are grown on plantations. In spring, they look the least like farmland - concrete pillars with wire stretched between them stick out in a bare field. The wire rings in the wind at a height of 5 m, like on a power line. In summer, the ground is covered with hop shoots, like a tent: the workers, with a special pole, helped each hop shoot to catch on the top wires in time. The cones ripen in August-September.
It is very important to accurately determine the moment of harvesting (i.e., the maximum content of lupulin in the cones) and carry it out quickly, since essential oils quickly oxidize. If the cones turn red, they are late with cleaning. Moreover, during cleaning, wet or rainy days are extremely undesirable.
Harvesting hops is difficult because lupulin is large quantities poisonous. The pickers have a headache. But humanity has always paid high price for receiving pleasure.
Even bakers cannot do without hops. To this day, dietary breads are baked using brewer's yeast. Many people know that brewer’s yeast itself is medicinal and is drunk to improve the body’s metabolism and increase appetite.
The medicinal properties of hops have been known for a long time. Recently, infusions have been used in the treatment of skin and breast cancer. Poultices and baths with hops help with radiculitis, abscesses and ulcers. After washing your hair, start constantly rinsing it with hop infusion, and your hair will become stronger and hair loss will stop.
Not everyone knows that drugs for heart disease (Valocardin in Germany and Valosadan in the Czech Republic) are prepared on the basis of hop oil.
One tablespoon of crushed pine cones, scalded with a glass of boiling water - old folk remedy from insomnia. An equally ancient method is to place a pillow filled with crushed hop cones in your head at night.
And finally, hop stems are a durable fiber for tarpaulins and burlap. And in Russia they also weave baskets from them.
Hops refers to edible plants, and quite nutritious.
In Russian villages, the first green cabbage soup was always brewed from nettles and young hop shoots. At this moment, the tender leaves and sprouts of the hop contain a large supply of vitamin C (remember, the roots stored it in the fall?).
Do you know what was included in the daily rations of construction slaves? Egyptian pyramids? Two jugs of beer, plus two baked breads, plus a head of onion or garlic per person!
How nutritious beer is can be seen by looking at the size of its regular consumers. By the way, it is the density of beer in degrees that is placed on bottle labels, for example, 12O. This value has nothing to do with alcohol content. Beer never contains more than 6–8% alcohol, and there can be no talk of severe consequences of intoxication. Therefore, the proverb is true: “No me, hops, more fun!”
Text: Margarita Turkina
“Garden Affairs” No. 4 (48), 2011