[tschmidlin]

I made it home without any ill effects. Left the hops in open brown paper bags with a layer of paper towels on the bottom. They are now drying properly spread out thinly on my dining room table. They are going to make the apartment smell GREAT! Thanks for the feedback, seems like there are some different opinions on the matter, maybe this would be a good idea for a future Zymurgy issue (if it isn't in an old one that I am unaware of).

Sorry, I guess I misunderstood.  I was under the impression you wanted to use them fresh, so my advice was from that point of view.  If you're drying them then the way you are doing it is fine.  I'd turn them occasionally to help them dry if you can't put them on screens.  A lot of people take the screens out of their windows and lay them across a couple of chairs to give better air flow around the hops.

[6thstreet]

I plan on picking my hops Saturday night and making a fresh hop beer Sunday morning.  My plan was to pick them and store the ones being used in the fresh hop beer in zip locks in the freezer and dry the rest.  Hopefully this works well.  The differing opinions on here has me a bit nervous as this is my first go at it.  Guess I'll plug away as planned and let everyone know how the hops were on the brew day.

[hopfenundmalz]

If you store them in the freezer, don't use a ZipLoc for more than a month.  Those are not O2 barrier, and you will get chessey hops.  The vacuum pack bags are said to be O2 barrier bags.

On drying hops, 140F is what the commercial farms use to get the troughput they need.  James Altweis claimed that low temps are better, as some of the essential oils can flash off at less than 140F.

[denny]

On drying hops, 140F is what the commercial farms use to get the troughput they need.  James Altweis claimed that low temps are better, as some of the essential oils can flash off at less than 140F.

I've been drying mine at 95F this year, down from the 110-120 I've used in the past.  I think they may be coming out better.

[giant_macaskill]

How long does it take to dry them at that temp?

[hopfenundmalz]

I dry mine in the garage on screens.  Today it is at 88F, just checked.  It takes 3 days for the hops to be dry.