Dear Animals: Leave my damn hop plants alone!

Little update on my hops growing.

Yesterday I received a text message in the morning from my mom explaining that my plants were growing out of their buckets and would need their trellis built here soon. I went over there that night to start building it, with no real plan in mind. When I got there my mom informed me that the night before a pair of deer decided to have a little snack on my damn hop plants. Clearly it was a little more bitter for their taste as they only had 2 bites off of them, but managed to eat all of my mom's flowers. (Sorry mom, can't remember the type of flower you told me). To add insult to injury, last weekend while I was up camping something, either the hailstorm we had or an animal, uprooted my hops plant letting it dry out in the sun over the whole weekend. I put it back in the ground but I have a bad feeling it's not going to pop back this time. I plan on putting a chicken wire fence around it. I'm tempted to add some voltage to that fence.

Back to building the trellis.

So I didn't have much in mind on how exactly I was going to build this. I knew how my friends Ted and Paul built theirs, so I had some ideas. After moving the plants a few times I finally figured out a plan of attack. With string, stakes, a ladder, scissors, and a staple gun in hand I was ready to attack. Here's my final product:

The green stuff on top of the stakes is irish spring to keep the damn deer away. Hopefully these little guys will start growing here soon. As for pictures of my plant, while, not much to show.. some dirt is about it. The little guy that was poking out before died in the heat.

Beer I drank while writing this: Tyranena Brewing Bitter Woman IPA. It seemed only correct giving my bitter state right now at animals.

Prost!

-Ryan

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

One month into unemployment - What I've learned so far

So tomorrow is my one month mark. I want to start off by telling everyone I've had multiple interviews all thanks to friends, family, and former coworkers who've helped me make those contacts. Without you I wouldn't be getting all the calls I am. Thank you for all of your help. So here are a few things I've learned in my one month of being unemployed.

• Being unemployed isn't all fun and games. I've forgot how much work does go into looking for a job. Contacting, researching, insuring it's the correct job for myself, and prepare, prepare, prepare. I've learned I can never prepare enough for an interview. 
• Prepare for the worst case scenario. You never know when life is going to throw you that interesting wrench into your daily plans. Last week I was preparing for an interview that afternoon. I had gone to lunch with some friends, came home, parked the car in the garage and closed the garage door. I took a shower and prepared for my interview. Walked out to the garage, hit the garage door button and the garage door only went up about a foot. It turns out the wire the pulls back one set of the springs had broke. Now my garage door is a solid wood core door, this thing probably weighs about 300lbs. Here I am in my suit, car is stuck in the garage, and I'm trying as best that I can to lift this thing. It's not going anywhere. I was just very lucky that I have a friend who works from home most of the time. He was able to come get me and bring me to the interview. Tim, I owe you huge for that still. Moral of the story, if possible, prepare for something horrible to happen and make sure you give yourself enough time. I had a professor in college say "If you're 15 minutes early, you're on time." I've really taken that to heart. Now does that mean that I'm showing up at the interview 15 minutes early? No. What it does mean is that I show up 15 minute or more early to the interview and I'll sit out in my car until about 5 to 10 minutes before. Which brings me to my next point
• Cops like to setup "donation centers" more during the day. Now that I'm driving around a lot more during the middle of the day, I tend to find out the local law enforcement really keeps tabs on the speed limit during the day. Now I've been know to have a "heavy foot" or participate in "spirited driving" sessions, but I'm really watching my speed now. This tends to make me leave for an interview that much earlier to insure I'm not making any unwanted donations to my local police officers. 
• My dog is spoiled. As I spend a large amount of time on my computer during the day doing job stuff, my dog has become accustom to sitting on my lap while I'm on the computer. As I type this now she's making sure the back yard is free of vermin. She also enjoys using my right arm as a pillow for her head, making mousing a bit tricky at times. Oh the things we'll do for our pets. 
• Daytime TV Sucks. Now, I don't spend that much time watching TV. I don't have a TV in the office and we only have basic channels. I do watch the news in the morning and evening, and there has been a few times I've flipped it on during lunch. I forgot how much I don't associate with the advertising of daytime TV. I'm not a mom, I'm not injured/bankrupt, and I already have a degree (not saying that means I can stop learning, just saying I don't need one from the local community college). Needless to say, the tv stays off. 
• Home Repairs are expensive. When not performing job searching duties, I'm typically doing something around the house. I'm not as skilled as a professional, but I can perform most common repair tasks. One thing that is nice is that with this time I'm now able to fix/repair/replace that (fill in the blank with something around the house) that I've been meaning to do for (fill in the blank with a number) days/months/years. When I bought my house my father told me "Ryan, If you walk out of Home Depot under $50, you had a good trip." Well Dad, I've had a few of those, but I've learned there's a small caveat to that statement. Under $50 per day, not per trip. My dad's local Home Depot and/or Lowes is a bit of a trip for him, so I'm assuming for the most part he plans ahead on his trip. Mine is about 4 miles away. I don't really plan ahead, causing multiple trips. Now though my repaired work bench cost less then buying a new one and is crazy stable now, it still ran around $60 in lumber/parts/screws/etc. That was a bit more then I was expecting, but it's awesome now. While we're talking about Home Depot...
• Going to Home Depot at 7am on a Monday is the BEST TIME EVER or anytime M-F during the day for that sake. The wife and I had gone there on a sunday at around 2pm. WORST...IDEA....EVER. I've been enjoying my daytime M-F Home Depot trips where, for the most part, it's only contractors in there. I'm sorry to the rest of us who don't do construction, but when I'm trying to find a particular part that I know where it is and you stop to show your husband that plant you think would be wonderful in the front yard, stopping directly in front of me, it drive me a bit nuts. My local Home Depot opens at 6am M-F, I went in there at 7am on a Monday. It was heaven. Which brings me to my next point...
• Walking into Home Depot with dirt, oil, and paint marked Carhartts and a shirt to match gets you instant help. They know I mean business. 
• Walking into the local eletronics store wearing the same cloths as Home Depot does not get you any help. Apparently I looked like a bum. *Shrug*
• I really don't like painting. I'll tape, clean, whatever, but I really don't like painting. I enjoy the end result though. 
• When sanding patchwork in the office, make sure to cover the desk/computer/everything. It made a huge mess. Yes, this was a "Duh Ryan" moment. Sometimes you need to learn by doing. Last but no where near the least...
• Thank your friends, family, and anyone willing to reach out. It means a lot to me that so many people reached out to me to help me during this time. Like I said at the beginning, everything helps. A huge thank you again! Hopefully I'll land something here shortly. 

Now a little brewing update. I've still got some very full kegs so I haven't brewed anything lately. I know I need to brew my helle here soon. I also planted some hops (Once again, thank you Paul for the extra plants). I checked on them and nothing has started popping up yet.

Prost!

-Ryan

The Laid Off Brewer

Hello to all of my readers. No I haven't forgot about you. Just a lot of things have been going on. Lets get the ugly crap outta the way first.

Last Wednesday I was laid off from my job. We were notified 6 weeks before that there were going to be layoffs. Did I think I was going to get hit? Well, I had my own reason in my head why I could and couldn't. Overall I'm fine with the situation. As much as it sucks, they provided a very nice severance package. I've got a few leads thanks to everyone reaching out to me. Hopefully I can turn something here in the next month or two. As fun as it is being home, it does get a little old. Maybe if the weather was nicer so I could ride my bike or work out in the yard things would be different. Heck.. even get a brew or two in ;)

So let's get back to beer talk. Three weeks ago Tony, Rob, and myself brewed my Tree Huggin Hippy Pale Ale. It's an all-organic pale ale. I'm pretty excited about this beer for the summer. I've already kegged it and just waiting for it to carbonate and condition. This is my first beer that I've made with a yeast starter. I was amazed at how quickly the yeast kicked off, in about 8 hours for full bubbling in the airlock.

I plan on brewing my Helle here soon as all 3 of my kegs are full at the moment. I always like to have something lined up to fill an empty keg. The helle will take a while to make which will be perfect for timing reasons.

Also with this last brew session it was very impromptu. I sent out a small email to some people but others found out and were a little upset they didn't get the invite. (Sorry Curly!). If you'd like to be on the brewing email, just shoot me an email or drop me a line on here. I'll add you to the list. Sometimes the brewing is planned, but other times it's hours notice, not days.  

Here's some picture from the brew session with Tony, Rob, and myself. Pictures provided by Tony. Thanks guys for helping!

 

Prost!

-Ryan

New Years Resolution & Beer Prices

So I realized that I didn't inform many people about my New Years resolution. Yes I try to do the same things everyone else does.. exercise more, eat better, watch my weight, but I did another this year that I really am going to try to uphold. My goal at the beginning of year was to not buy any beer but to only buy ingredients for me to brew, with a few exceptions.

The exceptions are the following:

• Going out to a bar, restaurant, state fair, vacation, etc. 
• Going to a party or throwing our own party. As much as I love supplying my own beer, sometimes I can't afford to drain all 3 kegs. Not that it's the cost that hurts, it's the 5+ hours of brewing to replace what's in there that hurts.
• If something new comes out from one of the commercial brewers that I want to try. Example: Summit's unchained series. BTW the new Gold Sovereign is amazing. Go buy it if you're in the Twin Cities area. 

So, with that said something new came out that I wanted to buy to drink while having my impromptu Friday brew session (which I'll blog about once I get the pictures from Tony).  Stone Brewing out of Escondido, CA just started distributing here in Minnesota. I've had their beer before when I've gone to Washington. I was pretty excited to try their beer again. After contacting my local liquor store to insure they had some, I went down there to pick up a few 6 packs. This was the first time I had bought beer since christmas time. Holy sweet mother of god that beer wasn't cheap. They only had two of their beers, IPA and their Levitation ale. At $10.99 + tax a 6 pack, I bit the bullet and bought one six pack of each, but even I hesitated to spend that sort of cash on a quality product. I can really understand why people might be turned off from going outside of their save beer zone to try something different. Now granted that's cheaper then the $7.75 I paid the next night for a pint of Stone Arrogant Bastard at the bar I went to, but if you end up not liking the beer, that's a lot of cash to figure that out. I really do enjoy the places that allow for the build your own 6-pack. Reflecting on this now did make me just think that everytime I brew, I'm taking a gamble I might not like it also. Only problem is at that point I've dropped close to $30, 5 hours of my time, and I have 5 gallons of it. Lucky for me I typically have suckers friends I can pawn off offer up my beer to.

To close this, I still really encourage you all to continue to support your local brewer or another craft brewer, even if they are "larger" now such as the Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams) or New Belgium Brewing (Fat Tire). These companies are still locally owned and put a lot of pride in what they produce. If your name is Drea and I see you drinking another Bud Lite I will give you the finger, just like I promised at the Ginger Hop on Saturday night. Remember, it's not that I hate lite beer, it's just that I hate Anheuser Busch (which now own Goose Island... damnit!)

Prost!

-Ryan