First Hop Cone Harvest!

Well, after debating on what to do, and looking the plants over, I decided to go ahead and harvest some cones. Several of the cascade hop cones were showing significant browning, and a few of the centennial hop cones had actually fallen off the bines on their own. My wife was kind enough to come take some pictures of me in my first harvest, so now you can see my ugly mug! It was very rewarding getting a chance to harvest my own hops, hoping to brew with them soon. I'm going to wait until my main harvest to brew a 'harvest ale' so, the harvested cones are now sitting in the garage on a window screen to dry. I do not have a vacuum sealer, so once dried I plan on packaging in good quality freezer bags, purging with CO2 to eliminate oxygen from the packaging.

Below are pictures of the harvested hop cones, cascades on the left, centennials on the right. In total, I ended up with 4.5 oz of cascade cones, and only 1.5 oz of centennial cones. Not a lot harvested, but I didn't want them to go bad!