Homegrown Hop IPA Brewday Update - Updated

This is kind of odd, I have not had a fermentation like this yet, here is the deal. As you can see in the video below the fermentation was really active and some krausen had formed. The video is about 14 hours into fermentation and I pitched on Saturday night. I went and checked it yesterday morning (10/26) and the krausen had already fallen. So I sat there and scratched my head as I usually have fairly long fermentation's and the krausen takes a while to fall for the majority of my beers. Also this was a fairly high starting gravity so I was really surprised. So I sanitized the thief and pulled a sample and took a gravity reading and this beer went from 1.075 to 1.025 in about 60 hours! Whoa! I am using two strains of yeast in this thing and I don't have any experience with either strain. I used Notty and WLP051.  I think the Notty took off early and then the WLP051 took over as I could definitely tell the difference in smell from the first time I checked it and how it smells this morning. Since I mashed high I am thinking that this beer is almost done, I am expecting it to finish around 1.020 - 1.015 so five to ten more points to go. I will leave it in primary and rack to secondary this weekend and start the dry hopping. Another thing that I found interesting is that when I tasted the sample of the cooled wort right after the brew session it tasted really super sweet, not a huge suprise but I thought that I would get more out of the 2oz FWH with the homegrown magnums. I did not get any bitterness in the first tasting. When I tasted it yesterday I defiantly got the bitterness, not quite as bitter as I wanted, but still enough to balance out the amount of sugars form the grist. I still have my fingers crossed but I think that this beer will turn out just fine! It tastes a little hot from the fast fermentation but it is not bad and it should mellow fairly quickly. Be on the lookout for more updates soon! Cheers.

P.S. Also congrats to Dank Brewer on getting his single tier set-up up and going! Cannot wait to see that thing in action!

SO the homegrown hop ipa is brewed up and happly fermenting. The post below has all the details, I will just tell you that brew day went extremely poorly, I started late and was rushed, but I know that I will end up with beer so it should be alright. My gravity is nice at 1.075ish and it is really sweet wort. I mashed a little high so there should be some nice sugars left over. The homegrown magnums did not get the bitterness that I was looking for but I will let you know how it turned out in about a month. Below is a pic of the sweet wort out of the kettle and a video of fermentation. Cheers!

Homegrown Hop IPA on Deck for this weekend!

I am really excited about this brew, my first with the nordeast homegrown hops! I will repost back with pics and notes from brewday.  Here is the bill for the HomeGrown IPA:

GRIST
65% 10lbs Golden Promise
6% 1lbs British Crystal 50-60L
6% 1lbs Biscuit Malt
6% 1lbs Munich Malt - 10L
3% .5lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine

With 10-15 min left in boil
13% 2lbs Corn Sugar (Dextrose)
1 Whifloc Tablet
Yeast Nutrient

HOP SCHEDULE (ALL HOMEGROWN)
FW 60+ 2oz Magnum
1oz Cascade @ 20
1 oz Cascade @ 10
2 OZ Cascade @ flameout to 140 degrees
2 oz Cascade Dry Hop

Pitched a tube (no starter) of WL051 Cal V and
Since I didn't do a starter I also pitched a pack of Nottingham dry yeast (was worried about underpitching with a high SG)


Cheers and look out for the updates on brewday.

Celebration Stout Tasting

Ahh the crisp air of fall has arrived and so has the dark beer! If you remember a while back my brother-in-law and his wife are expecting an arrival in a few months. I decided we should brew up a celebration ale so that he has something to sip on when he can't get out the door to get some more beer. This was my last extract beer and one of the best extract brews that I did.  When the beer was young I had two of them and they were good but needed a little more time to come together. Well that has happened and it is ready for a proper review.

The pour - A nice black oily looking brew with an awesome head which is visible above. The head took 20 minutes to die down and a nice frothy cap lingered until the last sip!
Aroma - Dark malt, molasses, coffee, brown sugar tones dominate and it smells like a nice dry Irish stout and I felt a little like Pavlov's dog when I was taking in the aroma.
Taste - Fits in perfect with the aroma, a really nice coffee, molasses dark malt taste with just a hint of hops and a really nice dry twang finish that should be present in a dry irish stout. It is not extract twang, it is from the yeast and while I was not happy with the yeast when it was fermenting, I gotta say that it did a great job and imparted all the flavors that it should.
Overall impression - This is a nice winter beer, the mouthfeel is a little thinner than it should be but it is close, this is a highly quaffable winter warmer at around 5.8 abv. If I did brew this up again I would add some more hops for bittering and aroma, but that might upset the balance that is happening here, but I would love to give it a try. Over all I am extremely pleased with this beer and I think that the brother-in-law will be as well. So raise a glass in celebration and cheers to the expecting couple!

Black IPA Tasting

I tried one of the Black IPA's last night and I am extremely pleased with the results. There are definitely things that I would change, but overall I truly think that this is my best beer yet. The pour is a nice dark brown with a nice creamy off white head. The aroma is of coffee and dark malts with a nice hint of hops. Nothing is really overpowering in the aroma and it is nice and balanced. The taste is hard to describe, I will attempt to take you through my thoughts as I drank this, I thought wow nice bitterness but is it the hops or the dark malts? It the hops, no the malt, you can see where this is going...it is a highly drinkable beer with a really nice mouthfeel and a nice lasting bitterness from the hops and malt. The finish is spot on and begs for another sip. Again, I am extremely pleased with this beer. Things that I would change are I think that next time, and there will be a next time, most likely fairly soon, I would be more aggressive with the bittering hops and also with the aroma hops. I would dry hop this either another ounce of Anthum hops or change the dry hop and go with either cascade,centennial or simcoe. I would also mash longer to get some more color out of the black patent as I would like this to truly be a black IPA and not a brown IPA. Other than that it will stay the same. Cheers to good beer and don't drink swill.  I am planning on doing some more videos in the nearer future and there are a few projects in the works. I will let you know more when they finally happen but the should be right around the corner now and I should have those project in full motion with a few weeks! Check back for some updates!

Homegrown Hop Harvest is Complete!

The first year plants had their ups and downs, two bines, the Willamette and the Northern Brewer's were non-existent, grew just enough to ensure some action next year. The other two bines, the Magnums and the Cascades went nuts and produced BIG TIME! With those two bines I got almost a pound and a half of homegrown organic hop goodness!  1.43 pounds or 23 ounces! The tallies are 12 ounces for the Magnums and 11 ounces of cascades. The cascades were a nice late surprise as we had the nice warm October weather here in Minneapolis and the matured in those two weeks and headed to the drying racks. Both plants matured late but since mother nature was kind so were the plants. I cannot imagine having two more mature plants as I feel like I have been picking and drying hops for the past two months, but once I get to brew with the hops all of that pain will be forgotten. I think that I am going to brew a nice American pale ale with the homegrowns, I will probably brew something similar to the Amarillo pale with the homegrowns for a nice comparison. I also have a breakfast stout waiting in the wings to be brewed which I will probably use the magnums for bittering. So there you have it, homegrown hops pay off big time and they are not that much work. For those of you wondering, I ordered the rhizomes online and got them in march and planted in Late April early may. I dug a nice big hole, placed some bone meal in the hole, filled the hole with compost, placed the rhizome in the hole and covered it with about 2 inches of compost and a thin layer of mulch. I also grow bushes along the fence so I already had drip irrigation there so I just moved the hose to be near the hops as well and watered them about for a few hours every week or two and bam! Please let me know if you have any questions about the hop setup! Cheers!

Homegrown Cascade Hops!



2 Bags Homegrown Goodness


My cascade hops have finally matured. Mother nature held up nicely the past few weeks with temps in the upper 70's to mid 80's over the past two weeks! I got my rhizomes in the ground pretty late in the spring (mid may) so these needed the nice warm October weather that we had in Minneapolis to fully mature. I was worried that I would not be able to use these hops, but with the nice warm weather they came along nicely. I picked an insane amount over the weekend and I finally completed my second drying rack for them since I needed it. I went out and bought a scale yesterday to weigh the hops and they were less than I thought but with the first round that is dry I ended up with 6 ounces of homegrown cascades. I have one more drying rack that is full of hops that probably has 2-3 ounces on it when they are fully dry and I have a few more ounces left on the bine that I am going to try and get to this week! Cheers to good beer and homegrown hops! My next brew will most likely contain either some of the magnums or the cascades!




6 oz Vacuum Sealed for the freezer