2009 Hop Harvest Yield

Twenty two ounces cascade hops dried and vacuum packed. Five pounds dried to one and a half pounds. Not bad I guess. Reused some of the food saver hop bags from last year to package them up in one ounce packs. Also opted to seal up some two ounce packages this year.

Almost forgot, I also got an ounce of Brewer's Gold.

Now I just have to pick the hops in the backyard. Maybe tomorrow.

Is it time to go all grain?

I have a mash tun, hot liquor tank and a brew kettle. I guess I'll need to see what else is on the list.

Any suggestions?

Local honey going in my beer.

A couple more than a few days ago my family ventured out to get some ice cream. You can get the stuff just about anywhere around here, but, we headed to a favorite place of ours, Milkyway Farms, home of Chester Springs Creamery. As we tended to our cones I noticed a little red wagon on the porch next to some crates. Looks like they sold out of the green peppers and the honey. Damn, that honey might have been interesting to brew with. Maybe I can pick some up another time.

Two days later my son and I made our way back from picking hops when I remembered the honey. The creamery wasn't even out of our way. So, we stopped in to find the little wagon loaded up with some honey. I grabbed two 8 oz. jars, a pepper and a dozen ears of corn, paid inside and buzzed down the road towards home.

As it turns out the Exton Bee Company collects this local honey. Hmmm...never heard of them. Haven't tasted the honey yet, but, I'll put it to good use...in a beer.

Fermentation Friday August 2009: I think I'll deviate from the schedule a bit here :-)

Yeah, why be all normal and stick to the schedule? ;-) Besides, I like it when I get to read Fermentation Friday posts early. Maybe you do too? Go on over to World of Brews where Matt lays it all out for us in this month's Fermentation Friday announcement. See you this Friday.

What's normal anyway? I think Matt's writing about taking risks. I'll interpret this one to mean. How do you take risks and expand your skills by getting some experience under your belt.

Got hops on my mind lately. Growing hops in my backyard felt pretty risky in the beginning. I didn't know how to grow them and I didn't know how to use them. Now its seems like second nature. Honestly waiting for them to grow proved harder than planting, picking, drying and growing. Of course building the 18 foot high trellis system covering a 100 x 50 foot area in Gavin's yard is a bit out of the norm, but, that was Gavin's idea...and backyard ;-)

How about that first recipe I formulated on my own. Talk about nerve wracking. I could be wasting 5 gallons of beer if it didn't turn out right. Don't laugh. That's how I felt. Now I formulate all my recipes either by using other's as inspiration, trying to improve mine or just thinking about what flavors I want in the mix. (with some help from BeerSmith)

In some ways my normal behavior forces me out of my comfort zone. I'm not very good at planning my brews weeks in advance as you may have noticed. I'd much rather brew on the fly which means I never have the exact ingredients on hand for a recipe. Each time I brew is a bit of an improvisation. Sometimes that means I might be forced to use a hefeweizen yeast to brew a pale ale with no wheat malt. It wasn't that great, but, it was interesting.

If buying a kit or buying the exact ingredients for a specific recipe is more typical, then racking a new batch onto the yeast cake of the previous brew is something different. Am I reaching now? How about continuous hopping throughout the boil? I've tried that as a method to get a fuller hop flavor. Worked pretty well. Late malt extract additions count right? Less carmelization and better hop utilization. How about splitting batches ad using two different yeasts or hops or adding honey or candy sugar?

Of course that stoutenporter I made almost five years ago is still sitting in a keg in the basement in all its molasses, coffee, brown sugar and skunky prehopped dark malt extract goodness/badness. I swear it tasted good with cake...'cause the cake sweetness took over. I keep trying to convince myself the champagne yeast will eventually turn it into a magical elixir. Heheh...fun to drag out every now and then and see people's faces.

Truthfully, I would not count any of these as stepping outside of the norm, for me today. That's the catch isn't it, the words "for me today". Hell, "brewing beer" once fell outside of my definition of normal. When I think of outside the norm I think of wild yeasts and pellicules or maybe brewing with choke cherries and a barrel. I'm gonna do it all it's just a matter of time and courage to take that risk.

Matt, I hope this inspires you. If you don't quite know how to go about it, why don't you blog about the adventure? Maybe we can put this loose community to good use. Ok, let's see what kinda deviant behavior those other homebrew bloggers are partaking in. (brewing behaviour of course...regarding the beer...oh forget it)

Take risks. Try something different. Its worth it in the long run.

August Fermentation Friday 2009 is this Friday!

Matt at World of Brews is the host this month. He wants to know why and how you deviate from the norm when you brew. He says...

"I want to know if and why you break away from the norm."

See you this Friday the 28th of August.

20 gal batch turned into a 14 gal batch...

I really wanted to brew that 20 gallon batch, but, it just wasn't in the cards. Instead I brewed a 14 gal batch of IPA with three ounces of the freshly picked mostly dry homegrown hops at flame out. What didn't fit in two carboys went into a bucket fermenter with some plastic wrap over the top. I couldn't find the stupid lid.

Also, I pitched the yeast slurry from the starter beer I brewed the other day. So in retrospect, I have close to twenty gallons of beer. 14 gallons of fresh IPA and 4.5 gallons of a pale ale that I should probably dry hop or maybe just keep it around for those light beer drinkers. Not a bad brew day :-)

How to dry hops at home

Here is what I know about drying hops at home. I'll try to hit all the important pieces, but, ask questions in the comments.

Here's a book I bought to help me understand drying hops.

Amazon: The Homebrewer's Garden: How to Easily Grow, Prepare, and Use Your Own Hops, Malts, Brewing Herbs

I also have a page of hop growing resources here...
http://www.nonconfermist.com/2007/10/hops-growing-resources.html

Overview
plant hops in spring
pick hops late summer early fall
dry them someplace that is dark, hot, low in humidity and/or has good air movement
store hops in cool dry place away from light and air
use them as you would use store bought hops

Detailed notes...

Basic principles of drying hops

• hops are living flowers with leafy cones
• inside the leafy cones is the lupilin we want to flavor our beer
  
• the object is to remove the moisture from the leafy parts and preserve the volatile lupilin
  
• you can use hops green (wet hopping or fresh hopping)
  
• storing them green promotes spoilage (that's what I've read)
  
• you can expect a 6 to 1 weight ratio from green/wet/fresh hops to dried hops (at least that's what I've found) one pound (16 oz) of green hops = approx 2 oz of dried hops
• drying hops allows you to store them longer deterring spoilage
• heat, low humidity and air movement can help to dry hops
• heat promotes evaporation
• dry air promotes evaporation
• air movement promotes evaporation
• the volume of your crop will dictate how you dry, you might need to build an oast to handle larger crops
• exposure to air and light during storage will change the flavor of the hops
  

My method of drying

• find a place that has as many of the following qualities as possible (hot, low humidity, good air circulation)
  
• I use my basement where I have a dehumidifier. Usually 50% humidity or less.
  
• get some screens (like old window/door screens)
• lay the screens out on something that will raise them off the floor/surface ( I use shoeboxes)
• get a fan to circulate air
  
• spread the green undried hops on the screens, I try to keep it to one hop cone deep
• after 24 hours they should be pretty dry, I've kept them there for up to a week
• Test, by checking the brittleness of the stem on the inside. If it breaks more than bends, then they are dry enough.
  

Storage

I use a food saver vacuum sealer, because I have one. I'm not sure that it is necessary though.

• package up in one or two ounce packs
• freeze or refrigerate (I've done both)
  
• take them out when you're ready to use
  

Using the hops you picked

• if you've dried them well, you should be able to use them in the same amounts as hops you've bought. Yes, that means that when substituting for pellets I use the same amount. 1 oz. pellets = 1 ounce homegrown
• The hop flavor tends to be cleaner and more pure. (subjective opinion ;-)
• They tend to soak up more wort/beer than pellets.
• hard to truly know their bittering potential, but, I try to use the guidelines from the place I bought the rhizomes from

Hop Harvest 2009

Our expert hops picker ;-)
Update: the Cascade dried to about twenty two ounces. Not bad.

The hop harvest moved a bit North this year to a friends hopyard. (I still have the backyard to pick BTW.) The new Hopyard with approximately 30 plants did quite well for a first year experiment. Only about half of the rhizomes planted yielded any flowers. These plants happened to be the Cascade rhizomes from my backyard. The other rhizomes from Fresh Hops grew just fine, but, produced very few flowers. This is to be expected when planting mail order rhizomes. My backyard rhizomes were on average larger and fresher. After a little over two hours (just after the rain) we picked almost five pounds of mature hop flowers leaving some of the smaller ones on the bine to see if they will mature a bit. Since the yeild was small I wasn't worried about the extra moisture. Five pounds, dot bad for first year plants really. We realized one thing, we're gonna have some serious work to do next year picking from mature plants. Visions of a mechanical hop picker already fill our minds.






I've included pictures and a video. If you have questions please leave a comment.

THE FACTS
# first year plants
# 15 plants
# 3 bines each
# ~18 feet trellis system
# almost 5 lbs of wet hops
# two adult pickers and my son (2.5 hrs)
# drying them in the basement with dehumidifier and fan, on 3 screens
# hung bines back up to keep them growing
# next year we'll probably just cut the whole bine down

August 2009 Fermentation Friday: Abby Normal:

Ok, so I came up with the Abby Normal reference. Matt at World of Brews is the host this month. He wants to know why and how you deviate from the norm when you brew. Se you next Friday the 28th of August.

Starter batch is fermenting :-)

20 gallon batch with a 5 gallon starter?

It's been a while eh? Thanks everybody for helping out with Fermentation Friday. Always looking for volunteers :-)

So, back to the topic of this post. My plan is to brew a 20 or 25 gallon batch by brewing a 5 gallon batch and transferring it into a 15 or 20 gallon batch (two ten gallon batches). I'll be using my 32 gallon brute garbage can for the fermenter.

Anybody ever try something like this? I'm thinking my pitching rate might be a bit high, but, I don't think it will hurt the beer too much. If anything it might make the flavor profile a bit too clean. No big deal.

What do you think?

Fermentation Friday: July wrap up, the schedule and topic suggestions.

Lots of things happening around here, including the good and not so good. Suffice to say this economic downturn is affecting lots of people I know. So, I've been plodding on through days and nights trying to focus on taking in the good, like Ommegang's BCTC.

As the fresh air, drizzling rain, ringing guitar and conversations of the weekend fade something came to my attention. I didn't put together a BB2 Fermentation Friday post for July. Probably not a bad thing, really. Nice to know it has enough steam to power itself. Thanks Rob for hosting in July :-) Read the wrap up. Go read posts from fellow brewers. Leave 'em a comment.

Here is the tentative schedule for the next few months.

August: Matt
September: Jason
October: Travis

Gentlemen, let me know if that schedule works for you and we'll finalize the schedule.

I'm always looking for more hosts. Just drop me a comment.

Readers, if you have a topic you would like to suggest. I'm all ears :-)