The dead of winter

Thought I would sneak in one more post for this year. Hope everyone has had an excellent Christmas. I also wanted to show just how dormant hops become over the winter. The weather has been pretty dreich recently which has done a very good job of finishing off any of the the above ground growth. I took some pics about a month ago and today for comparison. Here's the Columbus:

The before and after are from different angles but it should be very clear just how little life there is here. I'm hoping that sufficient life has been stored in the roots for spring. Only time will tell.

The same can be seen with the Cascade:

All of the greenery has gone now. Although the Cascade had shown some signs of recovery from the move they were not exactly overwhelming. I'm still hopeful that I will see it again in a few months time.

The Willamette is the plant I'm most worried about. There was very little evidence of regrowth following the move. It has also suffered from having its space being taken over by a random tomato plant:

The tomato has gone the same way as the hops as a consequence of the cold. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the hops are better at regrowing after the cold than the tomato. Given its perilous state I am seriously considering buying another rhizome or two for the coming year. In part to replace the Galena which met such a sad violent end. I intentionally left a space between the Columbus and the Cascade (where the Galena had been) when I moved them with a mind to adding another rhizome next year. How well it might do in between two established plants will be interesting to see. The stress of the move might be sufficient to put a new plant on an even footing. With any luck they will all start growing again before rhizomes become available for online ordering from Austin Homebrew so I can decide whether I really need to order more and if so how many.

Overall, this year has had its ups and downs. The hops were clearly not happy about being moved, even if it was only down the road. There were sufficient signs of recovery (particularly from the Columbus) that I'm hopeful that I'll see them again in 2014. On the positive side, this happened:

This is the first time I have managed to produce a beer with some of my own, home-grown hops. For me this is what it's all about, there really isn't anything quite like the flavour of fresh hops in beer. I've noticed a couple of breweries this year have also made beers with fresh hops available, namely Deschutes' Hop Trip and this year's Sierra Nevada Celebration. The downside to using fresh hops is that they're only available for a limited period. I'll just have to stick to pellets for the rest of the year. It does mean that there is good reason for looking forward to Autumn/Winter beers though, particularly if you've made them yourself with your own hops!

 

Have a great Hogmanay.

Winding down

The weather has definitely gotten colder. There hasn't yet been a freeze but we've been pretty close. In the meantime there has been very little observable growth of what remains of the three hop plants. They are at least still predominantly green, so I'm hoping that they are building up reserves in their rhizomes for spring. Here's the Columbus:

You'll notice that I've pruned the dead stuff, making what's left easier to see. It does make them look kind of bare and scraggly. If you look closely you can see some newer growth, as evidenced by the slightly lighter colour of the leaves (they're smaller too).

Here's the Cascade:

There's obviously a lot less of this, although there is some evidence of the new growth (lighter green colour towards the back) still struggling on. At least it doesn't seem to be getting worse.

The Willamette on the other hand:

Nearly all the greenery you can see here is from other plants, the catnip in the background in the pot and tomato plants that sprouted from our compost. You should just be able to see a couple of old looking leaves towards the top. Other than that there are almost no leaves over the rest of the plant. I will keep my fingers crossed for it but I don't have high hopes for its reappearance come spring. At least it hasn't given up completely.

On a much brighter note, I can report the outcome of using my hops in my own beer:

You of course can't tell just by looking that it was made using home grown hops. As a recap, this was made using the Austin Homebrew Kalamazoo IPA all-grain recipe and adding my own hops. The other thing you can't tell from the photo is the fantastic aroma and taste. The fresh hops have definitely lifted the original significantly. If you haven't tried growing your own hops to add to your own beer I can't recommend it more highly. What's the worst that could happen?

Brewing pt2

In this particular case I'm using a recipe kit from Austin Homebrew, their Kalamazoo IPA. This kits comes with pelleted Centennial hops which I will be using along with my own hops. The vast majority of the hops I have harvested are Columbus, which are normally used as a bittering hop as they have a high alpha acid content. However, it is unlikely that my own homegrown hops will have achieved such high levels of alpha acid, especially in their first year. I'm also not going to spring for a lab analysis. For these reasons I've decided to split them up, half (about half a pound, wet weight) going in at the start of the boil (as bittering hops would) and the other half going in 15 minutes before the end of the hour (along with the meagre offerings from the other two hops) to contribute to the flavour. Here's the first lot going in:

I poured them in straight from the freezer. This is what they looked like after a couple of minutes:

 

The smell at this point is amazing. I always enjoy brew day for the way it makes the house smell but using fresh wet hops always makes it that much more so. As I said earlier, I added the rest of the hops towards the end of the boil. All three Willamette cones (bless their hearts):

As well as 2oz of Cascade:

And the rest of the Columbus:

At this point the smell in the whole house is incredible, as long as you like hops as much as everyone in this house does. Once the boil is done it's time to cool the wort as quickly as possible. In our previous house I had done this by immersing it in the sink full of water with frozen cool packs and ice. As you can see in the photo below this isn't possible in our new place:

This is actually my first time using a cooling coil (also from Austin Homebrew). I should probably make it clear that I'm not affiliated with them in any way other than being a happy customer. Previously, wort cooling had taken up to 30 minutes. This coil brought it down to less than 15. I have read elsewhere that the quicker you can cool your wort the less haze you will get in the final beer, which is, unsurprisingly, referred to as chill haze. Everything I've read about it says that it doesn't affect the flavour of the beer so I hadn't worried about it much. We will see if this beer ends up with less in the way haze once bottled.

Once the wort has cooled and the gravity measured, the yeast starter culture is added. With the lid attached and air lock in place, the whole thing is placed in the basement to ferment:

 

The basement stays at a pretty constant 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and I was rewarded the next day with plenty of activity in the airlock. I have high hopes for this beer. I once previously made a beer with fresh hops I bought from my local homebrew shop in Houston (DeFalco's). It was easily the best beer I had made up to that point. If you have never tried using fresh hops please do yourself a favour and try it soon.

Brewing pt1

As I mentioned earlier, I thought I would take you through my brew day when it came time to use the hops I've harvested. I'm sure there are many and better homebrewing blogs out there but I thought I should see the whole process through, from planting a rhizome to making the brew. As a consequence I'm not going to be extra careful to include every single little detail but I'm open to questions. I've also discovered the length limits for a blog post, so I've had to split it into two parts. If you're only interested in seeing pics of fresh hops being dumped into boiling wort skip straight to part 2.

My brew day starts with setting up a starter culture for the yeast. I use a procedure for recovering yeast from previous brews, which can be found here. First thing involves preparing the actual media. I use honey (about 1cm deep at the bottom of a pint glass) and yeast nutrient. To this I add boiling water (to discourage other things from growing in it) and cover with foil. I also add a small magnet and put it on top of a magnetic stir plate:

This helps to mix the ingredients to start with but also helps with yeast growth once it has cooled enough for them to be added. Adding the yeast is done by pouring off the liquid above the cells and pouring in the prepared starter media, then back again and repeat until all of the yeast have been transferred into the pint glass. This is what the collected yeast look like before they're removed from the fridge:

Next step is to collect the water I'm going to use. I have discovered the hard way that the water used for mashing is very important. The first time I tried to do a partial mash, I got no conversion of starch to sugar and only succeeded in making porridge (didn't improve the flavour of the beer). After a little reading I discovered that the enzymes responsible for this conversion will not work above pH 6 and the water coming out of my tap was well over pH 7. When I found this out I immediately tried the water from our Brita filter which turned out to be below pH 6. As a consequence, all of the water I use for mashing and lautering goes through the filter:

I've relatively recently graduated to all grain brewing, which means that I have to collect a fair bit before starting. Once I've collected the volume I need for mashing it goes in straight in my largest pot to heat it to mash temperature:

The other two pots are for the water I'll use for lautering (what I always think of as washing the grain to get as much of the sugar out as possible). I was inspired to switch to all grain when I saw my neighbour throwing out this cooler:

It may not be pretty but it's clean on the inside and I've been able to fit it out with a false bottom and new plumbing (all from Austin Homebrew):

After mashing for at least an hour it's time to collect the sugary goodness inside (or wort as it's technically called):

You may or may not be able to see my bodged together setup for capturing some of the grain husks that try and sneak their way into the wort. These will apparently give the beer a somewhat astringent flavour if left in the wort during the boil, which is started once enough has been collected:

As I don't have a 10 gallon boil pot I am restricted to having to boil two pots. I suspect a pot big enough for the job would be too big for our cooker to actually boil which would then mean having to brew outside with a propane burner (I much prefer brewing in the kitchen, especially when it's not very nice outside). The one on the right is filled first, with the rest draining into the one on the left. While both of them are boiled for an hour, all of the hops will be added to the one on the right with the other one being used to top up the final fermenting volume to just over 5 gallons.