Growing Hops... Or lack there of

Often times people ask me "What's the most expensive ingredient in brewing?"

When I was extract brewing, I couldn't totally tell you because everything was somewhat expensive. The malt extract itself was probably one of the more expensive things. Now that I'm all-grain brewing, grain typically costs me around $1.15 to $1.60. A normal 5gal batch runs around 12lbs of grain. Hops runs around $3.50/oz or more with the typical beer using 2 oz and the IPA's running up to 9+oz. Going back to my families farming roots, I figured this year I'd grow my own hops. Not only as a cost saver, but once again having even more pride in what I made. Remember, I always tell people not to brew to save money, but brew to have pride in what you created.

This spring I pre-ordered 6 hop plants, called rhizomes, and knew that I was going to be getting some extras from my buddy Paul. There was a bit of mis-communication between myself and the mrs about where exactly I was planning on planting these hops. It was pre-agreed that my in-laws wanted some plants to grow on an old dog kennel, but that wasn't going to be all of the plants. My mom sparked some interest in growing some hops at her place. Perfect, now I've got my homes.

I planted 3 of them at the In-laws: Golding, Hallertau, and Centennial. Apparently I planted them too deep as all 3 of them rotted out and died. I fail. I'm too embarrassed to show the pictures.

I gave 3 of them to my mom: Tettnang, Fuggle, and Nugget. She did **not** fail. Here's some pictures from a little over a week ago:

I love the planter box

And here's one from a few days ago:

That's awesome. I know first year hops don't produce much and these were planted only about 3 weeks ago, but I'm stoked for anything I can get off them. Now, some of my friends and fellow brewers have crazy plants already. Some examples:

Paul's hops from 2 weeks ago. These are 2nd and 3rd year hops if I remember correctly:

Also an old highschool classmate of mine is growing his own hops. Check out Aaron's blog here. Here's a stolen picture from his blog:

Now, with all these people growing awesome hops, I still had a cascade rhizomes sitting in my fridge from Paul. I went to home depot two weeks ago and picked up a planter so that I could start growing it. Here it is today:

Now I know it doesn't look like much, but I'm pretty excited because this little guy has had a ruff life. It's been attacked by animals, twice, which left it uprooted. It also sat in my fridge for well over 2 months. With that little vine sticking up I know it should take off. I don't expect anything out of it this year, but hopefully next year I'll get a nice amount of hops off it.

Grandpa Giles Honey Wheat Update:
So, as hopefully you all read my last post about my crazy honey wheat which has my hands full, figured I'd give you a little update. My house smells like a brewery. I LOVE IT! Now, from time to time I've had it where I've got a little smell of the brewery when I walk right by the fermentor, but this time the second I walked into the house I could smell it. The smell has gone down a little, but it's still there in the basement. The airlock bubbling has gone down a lot as I'm now on day 3 of fermenting. The first few days are the strongest, then it starts to go down near the end of day 2. Hopefully I didn't contaminate the beer at all.

I'm going to do a new segment on my blogs. I plan on writing what beer I'm drinking while writing, if any, and my notes on it. So, for this blog I've been drinking Southern Tier Hopsun Seasonal. They advertise it as a summer wheat beer with 1 variety of hops (doesn't say which hop, but my guess is cascade) and 3 types of malts (my guess, your typical 2-row base malt, a wheat, and a low number crystal malt, maybe 20). For a wheat beer it has a pretty aggressive IBU, which is somewhat expected given the name. I personally don't know if I'd classify it as a summer beer as my idea of summer beers are very easy drinkers. This is more of an IPA, which can pack more of a punch in your mouth then wanted on a hot summer day. Now IPA fans don't get all butthurt, I love the IPA just like everyone else. I'm just saying on real hot days I enjoy something a little easier on the mouth then a 60+ IBU beer.

Prost!

-Ryan

The Grandfather Series - Session 1 - Grandpa Giles

A little over a year ago I had a pretty ruff time. I lost both of my grandfathers in about a 5 month period. I thought about how I can honor them and their life. While I'm still thinking about another way which I want to keep quiet until I actually do it (if I do), I plan on honoring them in a bit of a different way. I present the Grandfather Series. While neither of my grandfathers were big on beer (or at least not that I remember), they were both farmers in Montana. In creating these recipes, I thought about the items which they grew. In no particular order, here's my first shot at it with back story....

My Grandpa Giles (Mom's Dad) was a farmer in north central Montana, often known as the "Golden Triangle" due to the large amount of wheat which is produced there. My grandfather also had a love of honey. So much so that he would allow local beekeepers to put bee hives on his land. It was only natural for me to create a Honey Wheat to honor him. Now I do still have family in that area which do grown wheat. I didn't use family wheat due to the process which is required to make it into a brew-able product (Sorry Karen!). So with that, I did the next best thing I could which is buy wheat from the Golden Triangle which is processed for brewing. Who knows, maybe it did come from the family farm. As for honey, I hit up the Minneapolis farmers market where I bought 1.5 lbs of honey from a local bee keeper. I wanted to use unprocessed crystal honey, but for first run cost reasons I used the liquid melted stuff. This was my 2nd time using honey, but it has been many years. My very first kit brew was a honey wheat which if I remember correctly tasted horrible. Here's a breakdown of the recipe:




Ingredients

Amt	Name
6 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
4 lbs	Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM)
4.0 oz	Carawheat (Weyermann) (50.0 SRM)
1 lbs	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
1.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 2.0 min
1.0 pkg	American Wheat Ale (Wyeast Labs #1010) [125.00 ml] w/ 1200ml Starter
1 lbs 8.0 oz	Honey (1.0 SRM)

Mash @ 152f for 60min (Just a bit higher then I wanted, 150 would have been better)
Batch Sparge at 170f
OG: 1.054 (Lower then I wanted)

My grandfather was a bit of a wild man in his younger days, per my mom's stories. I think he was watching me while I was brewing this beer. I keg my beer which limits the final amount of beer I can brew at 5 gallons. Yes I could bottle some and keg some, but I really hate bottling. No, seriously, I hate it. Now I'm using a new brew pot which I was pre-warned from my buddy who I bought it from that it tends to evaporate a bit faster then others. It's a 10 gal pot which I went from a 7.5 gal (now used as my hot water tun, sorry it's not for sale!). So with that known, I ran a little higher on the liquid side assuming greater evaporation. When I put the beer in my 6.5 gal fermentor, it measured a little over my 5.5 gal marking. I'm guessing around 5.7 gals. Now that doesn't give me much head space for the yeast, then add the 1200ml yeast starter I had running for 3 days it makes even less. I was really worried this beer was going to be a handful for me, but I had no clue exactly what I was getting into. Remember, honey is a sugar, which is food for yeast.

I put the beer in the fermentor on Sunday 2pm, by 8:30pm I had heavy action in the airlock. Uh oh. This morning (Monday) at 6:30am I woke up to this:

Shit. This is what's called a blow-off. I've never had this problem before. So much so that my dumbass gave away my blowoff tube which is given in most starter brew kits. It's a large tube that goes where that airlock would be. Being that it was early and I needed to get ready for work, I put tin foil over the top of the air lock to keep crap from falling into the airlock and possibly into the beer, added additional towels around the fermentor and went to work. I never thought about adding smaller tubing which I have into the airlock to contain some of this. 

5pm Monday:

Tin foiled helped a whooole lot :p You can see it on the right side. Black thing in the back is my stir plate. Seems like my grandfathers wild ways continues with this beer. The action in the airlock has gone down enough that I was able to add more liquid (Actually used Jack Daniels in the airlock). It's still bubbling away.

Ryan and Grandpa Giles:

My next brew will be honoring my Grandpa Joe (Dad's Dad). Grandpa Joe used to grow 2-row barley for Coors. I'll also be including another interesting item (assuming I can find it). It most likely won't be until after the 4th of July, but stay tuned. I'll also have an entry here soon about my hop growing (or lack there of).

Prost!

-Ryan

There's nothing wrong with extract brewing

Greetings!

Yes, Once again I wait forever to send out an update. So, first with the good news. For those of you who aren't on facebook or never look at it... I'm no longer the unemployed brewer. I accepted a position with Land O'Lakes. So that's the wonderful news. Now on for the not so wonderful news. I'm in a serious beer shortage situation. I checked my kegs and all three are very low. Not good. My idea of "when one keg goes dry, I'll brew and I'll still have the other two to fall back on while the beer is fermenting" didn't really work that well.

So knowing my situation, last Saturday Erin and I went to Midwest Supplies for the emergency beer situation. I had no beer in mind. I asked Erin to just pick something out. Due to the time crunch I was in I wasn't going to have the time to brew all grain, which brings me to my point. There's nothing wrong with extract brewing. Really. When I meet fellow homebrewers they always think I think less of them because they extract brew. Hell no. I think it's wonderful that people create something that they can enjoy. I've made some damn good brews with extract too. Don't be discouraged if you're only brewing extract. There's nothing wrong with it.

Now, some of you may be asking what the heck is extract brewing? Extract is skipping the step of steeping the grains also known as mashing because it's already been done. It is provided in a half gallon like container and is very thick molasses like liquid. It saves a good hour or two off my brew session. The downfalls of extract is that the brewer doesn't have full control over the flavor profile.

In the end we opted for a sierra pale ale clone which I spiked up with some additional hops. I basically made it into an IPA. I plan on brewing again here in the next few weeks. I'm thinking a Honey Wheat. Until next time!

Prost!

-Ryan