Back in the saddle again!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally back in the saddle again. This is the second brew that I have made in the new abode. This one is worth a blog post, as the first one went well, lets just say that it went...not well. SWMBO gave me a free evening to do as I wish, she even suggested brewing, how can I say no. We moved into our place officially on 10/30/12 and closed on in the following February. I finally got my brewing stuff from storage the next year (long story) so I have not been brewing much. I have been seeking out many new IPA's though and I decide to brew one I want to drink that may have broader appeal with the family. I skew to the tooth enamel ripping bitter IPA's, so I went a little softer here with many late editions. It currently is fermenting away nicely in the basement at 70 degrees and smells AMAZING. Here are the beer nerd details:

17 lbs 2-row
.5 Crystal 60
.5 carapils
1 lb flaked oats

Mash at 152 for 70
sparge at 170 for 30

1.25 simcoe FWH
1.0 simcoe @ 20
1.0 sincoe @10
2.0 moasic @ 1
1.0 citra @ 1
.75 simcoe Dry hop
1.0 citra Dry hop
1.0 moasic dry hop

OG 1.076
FG ?

Cheers to making good beer, if feels great to be brewing again and I cannot wait to drink some of the new brew.

No Sparge Bitter Recipe - Update

*Updated*
Here are the numbers for the No Sparge Bitter.
OG 1.048
FG 1.012
4.5 % ABV

WLP007 is an AWESOME yeast. I have used it a few times now, and I am loving the quick (not hot) fermentations that I get, even at times without a starter. It ferments hard and quick. This one was completed in about 60 hours from pitch.

It sat in primary for 5 days and is now currently dry hopping in secondary. I just took a taste and I am pleased so far. Huge marmalade notes with some citrus. I am really digging the simcoe addition, and it plays really really well with the amarillo and glacier. It is however a little to aggressive on the bittering end. I am not convinced that it is too bitter, I am sampling it really early so I think that another few days in secondary, then some time in the bottle will treat it quite well. It has some really nice smooth malt qualities, and I am really liking that. Once it has had its time in the bottle, I will let you know how it is.

Cheers.



The homebrew club that I am a member has a members only competition in a few months at our summer bbq. The catch to this comp is that it has to be a lower gravity beer. By lower gravity we mean 6% abv or less because that is how this club rolls. I have been doing a lot or reading and watching videos on no sparge brewing. It seems interesting and also somewhat of a time saver and there is no real sacrifice. You may take a minor efficiency hit but to me that is not a big deal as this is going to come in somewhere around 5% and I am not trying to make a super high ABV beer, so if I miss my numbers, no big deal. I have a 60 qt Igloo ice cube mash tun with a cpvc manifold. It was plenty big for this beer. It is boiling away as I write so I will update with notes later. One thing I did want to say is that I crushed really tight at midwest, my lautering was really slow and almost stuck, so I sucked on the out hose and I got 170 degree wort in my mouth...OUCH, good thing I have some o'dell St. Lupulin to help out my tounge, damn that shit hurt like hell! Here is the grist and the gist:
6 lbs Optic Malt
5 lbs Pale Malt
.75 lbs Golden Naked Oats
.5 lbs Crystal 50/60
.05 lbs Roasted Barley
 Mash: Infuse with 3.76 Gallons for 60 min mash Mash temp was 153 after 60 min it was still 153
Add 4.94 gallons mashout water @ 190, temp stabilized at 170 Stirred and let settle for 10 min Lautered 6.5 gallons into brew kettle NO SPARGE!!
Yeast Nutrient @ 10
Whirlfloc @ 5
 Hop Sched: .25 oz Glacier FWH .5 oz Amarillo FWO .25 oz Simcoe FWH
.5 oz Amarillo at flameout .75 oz Glacier at flameout 1 oz Simcoe at flame out
1 OZ GLACIER DRY HOP 1 OZ AMARILLO DRY HOP 1 OZ SIMCOE DRY HOP
White Labs 007 Dry English Ale
As you may notice, this is a play on Surly Bitter Brewer with a slightly different Grist since it is no sparge, just bumped up the base malts a bit. I also changed the hops since I love me some simcoe and I am interested in how these three play together. More to come...

Blog Update and DIPA!

My wife and I welcomed our newest member of the family on July 10th, Greta Gail is doing great and getting older by the second. I have neglected this blog because time is very short these days and brew days are harder and harder to come by. But SWMBO was extremely kind and gave me and afternoon to do some brewing. I had no warning so it was a run to midwest and make something up sort of deal. I wanted to use up some of the simcoe hops that are in the freezer, so I opted for my first DIPA. Here is the Grist:
13 lbs Rhar Two Row
3 lbs Golden Promise
1 lb Golden naked oats
1 lb Crystal 50/60
.5 lbs Cara Pils
Hops: Mash Hops 2 oz simcoe whole leaf - since I have an abundance of simcoe I decided to throw some in the mash.
First Wort 1 oz Chinook Pellets
First Wort .33oz citra .33oz simcoe .33oz cascade
60 1 oz Simcoe
20 1 oz Chinook
10 1 oz Cascade
10 .75 oz Citra
1 2 oz simcoe
1 oz chinook
Dry Hop 10 days with
2 oz simcoe
2 oz chinook
1 oz cascade
Pitched 2 vials of WLP007 Dry English Ale This yeast is new to me, but it sure looks like it is a great strain. My og was 1.070 (63% eff) which was way low, but it will make good beer! The yeast went from 1.070 to 1.020 in about 36 hours which was pretty impressive, a very aggressive fermentation, fermentation was at 68 with a brief spike to 73 until I got it into the cooler and it is now at 66. I am really curious how this will turn out, but so far so good. Look for some pictures and updates as the beer gets into the bottle. Cheers!

Orange Rye IPA Tasting and Pour

I got a chance to give the Orange Rye IPA a proper tasting. While this beer is young, word has it that it is best fresh, so here we go:

The Pour:



Nice Orange/Copper, it does remind me of the trees in the fall. A nice two finger head on the pour.

The Nose starts with some simcoe fruitiness but then you can really pick up the citrus from the centennial and the orange peel. It also has a slightly sweet aroma, think candy and caramel, and a nice bready undertone from the rye

The mouthfeel is full, the fullest mouthfeel of any of the beer that I have brewed. Carbonation is spot on. The taste is Bitter/sweet, Assertive on the sides of the tongue but also a nice sweetness that is not overpowering. The centennials @ 60 was a really with the simcoe FWH. It is smoothly bitter and it lingers and coats the mouth. The later hop editions shine.

A c-hop resin finish with some lingering bread y spice from the rye and a hint if alcohol.

Over all I am very pleased with this beer. I would mash lower next time and maybe try hops that are near the same ibu level but are a little less potent, maybe something of the traditional english IPA. I do think that with another week or two of aging, this beer will be even better as it smooths out. Keep an eye out and I will try to write a review of it then.

Orange Rye IPA Update and tasting of more beer...

Dank Brewer and I had a quick taste of the Orange Rye IPA last week, and I jotted down this post after the tasting only to hold it off as I wanted to make sure it was coherent as I also tasted quite a bit of Dank's beer, while the beer ORIPA is not totally ready, I thought it would be nice to give it a go even though it has only been in the bottle for about a week. I am excited about this beer and I think that it has some really nice potential, only time will tell. The color is a nice orange/amber color, reminiscent of autumn. The aroma is very distinct, the simcoe definitely shines through but it also has a nice c-hop type of aroma as well, a very citrus-y fare with the orange in the backround. The taste is fairly assertive on the hop bitterness followed by a nice citrus from the orange peel and a bready spicy hint from the rye, citrus also comes through on the tongue in the finish. The finish is also sporting some nice lingering bitterness which balances out the sweetness from the high mash temp. I cannot give a true verdict on this beer until it is fully carbed and chilled, but so far so good. Also I had a great opportunity to taste a nice variety of the Dank Beers. I was super impressed with the Dark Embrace and The Essence. Both IPA's and both totally different.  The dark embrace is a great take on the dark IPA. Early editions of simcoe come through really nicely and this beer does not leave one confused where the bitterness comes from, no malt bitterness from the dark grains, just pure hop bitterness with an awesome aroma, definitely one to try if you ever run across Nick. The Essence has really come along nicely. The only other time I has this beer it was very young, time was really good to this beer as it now has a wonderful pungent c-hop aroma and a crisp assertive hop bite. A touch of honey is also present and rounds out the beer nicely. One could look at the hop schedule and think No way that is going to be balanced, but it honestly is and it was a great beer, if you are a hop head brew it up, it is worth it, it checks in high on the ABV and higher on the IBU's but man it is a great beer. Stay tuned for more updates when I get the chance to post them, and a full tasting of the orange rye IPA.

Orange Rye IPA

Since I have consumed almost all of the simcoe single hop IPA, it is time to brew more beer as I am running out! I brewed up an orange rye ipa that I think will be really tasty. It is a combo of several recipes, from denny conn and don osborn with my own hop twist. Here is the grist and hop schedule:

12lbs rhar 2 row
3 lbs Rye Malt
1 lb crystal 40
.5 rhar white wheat
.5 carapils

Mash 180>156 for 1 hour (mashed high as I knew this was going to be really bitter and I wanted enough sweet left over to balance it out. Sparge at 167 for 30 min.

FWH 60+ 1oz Simcoe 12.7
60 1oz Centennial 9.7
30 1oz Centennial 9.7
15 1oz Sweet Orange Peel
5 2oz Simcoe 12.7
2oz Simcoe 12.7 Dry hop

Yeast starter of 1056

OG 1.070!
FG ?

68% brew house efficiency

Brew day was split into two, I mashed and sparged friday night and heated the kettle to 185 covered it in blankets and let it sit over night. Woke up @ 6am and the kettle was @ 170, added FWH and brought the kettle to a boil.

I am hoping that this works out just fine as I rarely have time to fit in a brewday and if I can keep splitting it up I think that I will be able to brew more as I am not spending a whole day brewing. Stay tuned for updates! Cheers to good beer.

Single Hop Simcoe Tasting

First I will start out with the review of the single hop IPA simcoe edition. This beer pours a clear orange color with a nice cap that sticks. The aroma is of pungent simcoe hops, really nice strong simcoe smell from the big late editions and the dry hop. The taste is somewhat bitter up front, assertive but not overly bitter, there is some malt balance then a burst of hops come through and it finishes with just enough lingering bitterness with a hint of sweet. Mouthfeel is really nice, the oats definitely add a touch of smoothness that i really like. Over all I have to say that is by far and away my best beer yet. It fared really well at the single hop tasting and was enjoyed by all. This beer on an A to F scale gets an A. This is a beer I would buy and drink a massive amount of, even though I love the simcoe hops, I think that many beer drinkers would really like this offering. It is a shame that I have drank nearly the entire batch as I really should have saved some and entered it into a competition to see what the scores would be just to see how it measures up. I guess I will just have to brew it again! Also be sure to stock up on your simcoe and amarillo hops as there is a reported shortage of those hops in 2011! Midwest and Northern Brewer are out of them or have very little in stock and midwest doesn't anticipate another shipment of simcoes until next year! I got a pound in the mail and I will repeat this beer and then brew a few more beers where simcoe is the finishing hop.  Check out the pictures of the Nordeast brewers alliance single hop ipa beer tasting! Cheers to great beer!

Black IPA Pour

Here is a pour of the black IPA. A very good beer with a head that lasts to the last sip, aggressive on the hops but smoothed out by the malt. A nice winter warmer. See the previous post for the grist, this batch was primed with carb tabs.

Homegrown Hops IPA - Thought and Review

I will get some pictures up when I can. The homegrown hop IPA is not the beer that I hoped it would be. The grist seems to be alright and I am going to brew this up with the same commercial bill to see the difference, which I suspect to be quite substantial. The homegrown hops are not very potent, they lack the bitterness that I was going for, that alone would not have been a big deal, the biggest problem with the beer is the taste that the hops imparted. I think that this is a two pronged issue, one I think that the hops just are not very good as they are first year hops and were probably not dried as well as they could have been, also I used notty as the yeast and it just plain sucks if you ask me, I will never use it again, a real fruity odd taste that I can tell is coming from the yeast. The fermentation temps were on the high side, but they were no outrageous (lower 70's) and all of the other liquid and dry yeast that I have used has not had a problem like that. The beer is nice and malty with some roasted overkill from the biscuit but the beer has an overwhelming sour fruit flavor that I just don't like, I can drink it but I just am not crazy about it. The nice thing is that this beer is really strong (9.7 ABV) so I only need one any way. The hop taste is really hard to describe, it is a sort of vegetative sour fruitiness that just doesn't belong in beer. On an A to F scale I would give this beer a C- D+.

Enjoy! Eyedea,P.O.S and DoomTree

If you are into hip-hop or spoken word type stuff or if you are into local music then you should already know about these three, but just in case you don't here are three of my favorites, not only in Mpls, but just in general. I highly encourage you to check out P.O.S, the range of his music is just amazing and all of it has a vibe that I just dig, so check it out, also doomtree is a local conglomerate of artists and they follow in that same trend. Check them out and go catch a show at first ave or another local venue, you will not be disappointed. Eyedea is a lyrical genius and will truly be missed, I hope the other side finds him well. Some of my favorite lyrics of all time are in the hook of Burn Fetish, writing at its best. Cheers!

Brewclub Single Hop IPA

My contribution to the great hops experiment is in the fermenter. I did the simcoe edition. Here is the grist:

10 lbs Rhar 2 row
1 lb flaked oats
.5 lb crystal 60
.5 lb cara-pils

Hop schedule (All Simcoe Hops)
.75 oz @ 60
1 oz @ 20
1 oz @ 10
2 oz @ 1
2 oz Dry Hop for 7-14 days

OG 1.056

Brew day went smooth, mashed at 152 for 1 hour, sparged 167 for 30 min. I did a much better job hitting my temps with this brew so I am excited about that.  I also had some efficiency gains taboot. I got 6.75 gallons of wort, all of the simcoes in the boil at the right times, and I also got my wort really nice and chilled down and fast, I guess that is the one advantage to MN in the winter! Got it cooled down to 68 in 20 min and pitched my starter of 1056. I pitched around 5 and there is slow activity now @ 9:20 and the fermenter is 66 degrees. Looks like it will be right on track. Also a big shout out to SWMBO for the time!! Check back for the latest on the Nordeast Brew Clubs single hop experiment.

NE Homebrew Club Single Hop Brew Off..The Great Hops Experiment

So my next batch will be for the Northeast Homebrew Club's first ever single hop brew off. There are five of us in the club that will be brewing the same grist and using a single hop for all of the additions. I am excited about this and Dank Brewer and I have talked about doing this for awhile on our own so it is very cool that there are more people involved. I am obsessed with hops and I am really excited to see how different all of the beers turn out. Here is the grist:

10 lbs American 2 row
1 lb flaked oats
.5 lb crystal 60
.5 lb carapils

Hop Schedule is:
@ 60min  1.0 oz Simcoe
@ 20min 1.0 oz Simcoe
@ 1min 2.0 oz Simcoe
Dry Hop 2 oz Simcoe
 
I will be using simcoe! Real excited about that as that is my favorite hop and one that I have wanted to do a single series on for a while and now I have a reason to do so. The other hops in the mix for the other four people are:
 
Sorachi Ace - Really interested to try this one as it is a newer variety that I have never tried
Fuggles
Citra
Saaz
 
I will report back with brewday updates and also tastings sometime in January.  Cheer to good beer!

Brew Haus Update....

I just realized that I have been slacking when it comes to posting. This is due to many things, for one it has been really cold here in Minnesota, the holiday season is upon us, and we have had many project going on with the house. The house project is a curse and a blessing. The curse is that I should have done the work years ago, the blessing is that I get to craft my perfect fermentation/beer storage room! The basement in my house used to be wet, not super bad, but the first spring thaw was always a bitch, usually involving hours with a shop vac and dehumidifier, but that will be no longer as I just had an interior drain tile system put into my basement! Good bye dank and dingy basement and hello to drier days ahead! SWMBO has given me carte blanche on the back room in the basement for my inhouse brewery! I am going to get some shelving, and also going to be putting in a nice epoxy floor. Look for some pictures in the upcoming months. I will also try to get some video projects off the ground after the holidays so be on the lookout for those. So there are bright days ahead for the NHB! I will try to post updates as things get completed. Here is what the back room looks like now and in a few months it should look much better! Cheers!

Amarillo American Pale Ale - Update

The amarillo american pale ale is now in the sweet spot. The beer is crystal clear and all carbonation problems have worked themselves out. Time is really the key when having carbonation issues, this batch was bulk primed and I did not get the sugar mixed in well enough, so the last few bottles were gushers and the first ones bottled took over 5 weeks to prime. Another thing to note is the taste difference between the beer that were lightly carbed and the ones that were over carbed. The over carbed beers, at least early on, tasted so much more complex and fruity, the ones that were under carbed we harsh and extremely bitter. Strange to say the least as I thought that priming with dextrose did not change the flavor of the beer. That still may be true, if you wait long enough. Two things that I have had to admit to myself are that I am impatient when wanting to drink my beer, another is that I over bittered this batch a bit. Here is the true review of the first all grain batch I produced, the Amarillo American Pale Ale:

Pour - Pours a bright orange, almost crystal clear with a nice white two finger head.

Aroma - Citrus/spicy hop aroma. No sweetness in the aroma, a nice match of the spicy chinook hops and citrus fruity notes from the amarillo and simcoe hops, smells really nice.

Taste - Well carbonated, nice mouthfeel may be a bit thin, the bitterness is aggressive and a little over powering but not bad. Next time I would just do the 1/2oz chinook FWH and not add the other 1/2 oz @ 60. This beer would be much more balanced without the extra 1/2oz. But if you are a hophead you will like the bitterness, to an untrained palate it may taste a bit harsh and overbitter.

Finish - Lingering bitterness and some spicy notes, not sure where those came from simcoe/amarillo or just the combo? I really like the aftertaste and the flavor/aroma hops, this is a solid beer, not a competition beer. On an A to F scale I would rate this a B+!

Cheers to good beer!



Biscuit Malt

In the homegrown IPA I used a pound of biscuit malt. I like malty beers and figured that a pound of biscuit and a pound of Munich 10 would add some really nice malt complexity. I did a lot of reading and the line with biscuit seems to be do not use for more that 10% of the grist. I ended up using it at 6% of the grist and I feel like that is WAY too much. I kind of knew that I was high on the biscuit but I figured that it never hurt to experiment so off I went. Now the problem here is two fold, one is that I did not get the bitterness from the homegrown hops that I wanted that would have balanced it out and two is that I just plain used too much of it. I will be bottling this beer hopefully this weekend so that I can let it sit for awhile before I start ripping into it. All of the samples that I have tasted are just different, the biscuit stands out way too much and it threw the beer out of balance in my opinion. I am curious how this will taste after it has been aged for some time. I am really interested to see how this tastes in say January/February after 3-4 months in the bottle. If you are looking for a flavor reference for biscuit malt think fat tire, you know that really nice maltyness that you get in that beer, the flavor that kind of stands out, I am not sure that it is biscuit malt in that, but that is the flavor that I have picked up in my beer, and it is dominate! I will update you and let you know how the tasting goes and we will see if this is a beer that I will never ever brew again, of if it is a beer where I can stand it and like it as a change of pace and a beer to lay down for a while. Only time will tell! Cheers!

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!