2010 hop crop... comin' up!

Just a quick one today to chronicle the 2010 hop crop. I dug up and gave away two of my plants a couple weeks ago, and so I'm down to growing just two this year.. 4 was too much, and I never used 'em and the maintenance was too high. Decided to drop back to my two favorites and grow te heck out of them, hopefully. We're doing just Nugget and Cascades this time around. Check these pics of the 'power pyramid' trellis thingy (as w've started calling these triangle things I built..) they'll be growing on this year..

Here's a shot of the Cascades just popping up:

This here is the entire setup for the Nugget plant..

Sweet placards I made up for 'em, eh?

And finally, the Cascades whole pyramid  trellis.

I like the look at stability of this idea.  hope it works. In futre blogs, we'll chronicle the growth of the plants and how I'm going to string the twine for them to grow on.. I've got a couple ideas in mind, and I might try something different with each one to see how they work. Stand by on that..

Yeast washing...

Tried a little experiment with yeast washing to see what would happen.. I didn't use this yeast afterwards, because I had just done a fairly high gravity beer with it and couldn't go down gravity next.. so I did it just as an exercise to see what would happen. Check the pic:

In the photo, I'm pointing at the middle layer of good yeast that could have been re-pitched, had I wanted to. Wait, backup. Process! As I understand it, you boil about 1/2 a gallon of water or so, and then cool it, just to sterilize the stuff.. then, when you've racked a beer just out of primary and you have that big pile of junk on the bottom, you pour this cooled water into that fermenter and swirl the stuff around to loosen it up. Then, take your also just cleaned and sanitized 1/2 gallon growler, like the one in the pic, and send all that goop from the fermenter into it. Give it a swirly, and then let it sit. After a few hours, or overnight, the trub and hop matter will sink to the bottom (seen just under the white-ish later I'm pointing at here..) and stay there. The good yeast is the stuff in the middle layer, and supposedly, the dead yeast float on the top layer.. What appears to be "beer" here, is actually just the boiled and cooled water that's mixed in with some other stuff, which made it pick up some color that gives it that amber look.

This is all very interesting and you'd think "great, now I've got a good pile of clean yeast to re-pitch" but the problem came when I tried to separate it.. the stuff just all starts to flow out in a three colored stream and I couldn't get 'em to be distinct, separate piles of goop. So, what now? I dunno.. maybe a different vessel with a larger opening to pour out of would have a different result? I'll have to goof with it some more. Good experiment though.. was interesting to see the way it turned out..

Foxtrot and Black Bear update, Red beer down and Curieux..

Check it:

The Red Beer, brewed with Timmay back in the very beginning of January, is down! Good beer, that. I just stuffed the mini keg of the Irritable Bear sour stout in it's place for carb'ing up for the May 2nd Big Brew we're having here.. Irritable Bear is the one gallon sour version, fermented with the Jolly Pumpkin 'Bam Bier' strain of yeast, of the ol' #79 Black Bear Belgian stout I brewed with Jody. Probably soon, I'll take that minikeg out of there and put the Black Bear stout itself in there.. for a bit of a tasting on the May 2nd fiesta. The Foxtrot IPA (109 IBU's!) was kegged yesterday as well, and that'll go online when the next keg goes off..

Tap #4 is hosting the 100% Brett 'C' beer I did way back as well.. and that's doing fine too, and I'm getting more of an appreciation for it now as time goes by. Had a fellow over yesterday (Vincent) who is a member of a rag-tag group of brewers in the Harwinton/Torrington area not affiliated with a club at this time, who I met through a Craigslist posting when he responded looking for some hops.. anyway, he popped in and had a taste of that and mentioned that he thought it tasted like a German Riesling wine.. which I thought was pretty curious and fairly accurate, when looked at in that light. Interesting.. more on this fellow and his crew (who brew on a 20 gallon+ system!) when more intel is gathered about them. So far, they operate under the radar like brewing ninja's..

Another friend came up a couple nights ago (Hi Colin and Dawn!) and brought this thing with him, Allagash Curieux, a bourbon barrel aged thing of 11% power. The oak is pretty restrained in this pale colored beer.. it's a hot one, though.. burns just a bit on the palate, but a 12oz glass is manageable solo. Bring a friend to finish this whole bottle, though.. a well done beer of some complexity, but no sour, which I was sort of expecting being that it's from Allagash and barrel aged. One would just expect it, no? Well, no. Hmm.

In sourdough news, I brought the culture back to life after a harrowing battle of a near sourdough death experience. The problem was solved with a small application of pulverized 2 row barley. Ingenious! Fired that sad stinkin' yeast beast up right quick. In the midst of the build up of the dough as we speak...

That is all for now. Carry on..

Easter bread, some beer updates..

So, it's Easter today.. here's a shot of the bread I made for the dinner. A huge, 2.5lb sourdough boule, and a challah bread. I don't know anything about that rabbit..

Here's a bunch of shots from the Foxtrot IPA I just did solo. First,  here's a shot of the mass of hops that I 

got out of the bottom of the kettle after the transfer into the fermenter. And this wasn't even all of it.. there was more than I'd thought there would be.. that bucket is full!

After the primary had settled, but before I pitched the yeast, I racked into another carboy to try and keep some of the goop out of the primary fermentor. Check out the level of hop goop before the transfer took place:

And here's the racking process itself taking place.. 

Much cleaner looking after all was said and done. Additionally, here's a pic of the new mash paddle I used, which was fashioned from a wooden paddle I rescued from the Farmington river. Check it next to the old one:

This paddle was totally awesome. That extra foot of handle length really made stirring much, much nicer.

Here's a shot of the hydrometer pre-ferment..

In addition, here's a shot of the Black Bear Belgian stout gravity reading, the one I made with Jody a few weeks back. It finished a bit drier than his, as he said his ended up near 1.016.. this one came in at 1.012. Works out to ~7.1% abv. Looking forward to  a side by side between his and mine to see how that works out, fermented at different temps and attenuation levels. Check it:

I can tell you honestly, in the hydro jar and the pint (warm and flat) that was leftover from racking this Stout into a keg, it's totally fantastic. Easily one of the best homebrews I've ever made. Look for it here in a week or two..

Carry on.

The Brutal Truth: Geoff's ESB...

OK! So here we are again, for another heart wrenching episode of The Brutal Truth, where your's truly evaluates another brewers home made creation with no punches pulled. Today, we have this:

We're gonna score this according to BJCP style guidelines and their point system, cause Geoff was bold enough to enter this in a comp. somewhere.. and I just wanna see how close I get to their scores. Here we go!

Bottle inspection: pass. filled good and the cap was on. F'ing righteous!

Aroma: Good. Caramel. Something else I can't put my finger on.. No diacetyl here. low esthers. 8/12

Appearance: Acceptable. Head retention was poor out of the box, and clarity for style is probably a little on the low side. I'm gonna go with 2/3, but I'd probably give a 1.5 if it were an option.

Flavor: Very good for style. A bit of a mineral-ly component, but that's in the range for this kind of beer.. Hops evident, and taste nice.. bitterness on the moderate to upper moderate end of the spectrum. There is a microscopic level of slickness I'm picking up.. possibly diacetyl? Not positive.. but still well within range of this class. I'm gona score this a 15/20

Mouthfeel: medium body, average carbonation. fine for the style. 4/5

Overall Impression: Tates good, easy to drink, hops are quite fine.. a little mineral/metallic thing that distracts somewhat, but others may find that quite refreshing. I think I'd dial that back just a hair, after the source of it was found.. not entirely rinsed sanitizer? Some brewing salt overload? A bit of diacetyl here that becomes more evident the further into the beer I get.. but still, like I said, not offensive. I'll go 6/10

That brings us to a 35 out of a possible 50. That's a "Very Good" according to the BJCP guide.. and about what I'd say this beer is, very good! Some room for improvement, but certainly a solid brew. Good job Geoff! Thanks for the beer!

Hop shipment, and a hike with the kids...

The big hop shipment came in yesterday afternoon.. 23lbs of pure joy. Check it:

This is the 27lb box it came packed in..

This is Timmay, huffing a just opened 5lb bag of Amarillo, so we could get out his 1lb amount that he ordered.

This is how the individual bags of 1lb increments came packaged. the foil is awesome stuff.. nicer than the plastic vac bags me and Pete got a few years back when we last ordered.

Switching gears, this is me and the kids on a picnic hike through the Henry Buck trail inthe American LEgion state forest in Barkhamsted, here.. nice trail, but probably a little tough for a 5 year old.. and tough on the dad who has to start carrying them on his back about 2/3rds of the way through the hike.

This is a big rock:

This was named "The Troll Bridge with No Trolls"... because, well, there were no Trolls!

And this paddle was a nice find, stuck in a swirly bit f water at the rivers edge on the way back to the car. It's gonna be a mash paddle, after I trim it up a bit. The current paddle I have is just a hair too short.. this one will work quite nice as a replacement!

In other beer news, that darned Belgian Stout is *still* fermenting hard core downstairs. How is this possible? It's been going for days now.. sure is gonna be tasty though, I can tell that much already just by the smell of it. The "Delta" Wheat aka Jess's Mean 40th (that I brewed with Pete W. a few weeks back) is also online and ready, and tastes like a million bucks! Real tasting notes in a couple days when it settles just a bit more, but I had my first glass yesterday and it was quite good.

Chickens are still doing well. Starting to move the tractor around the yard now that the grass is beginning to grow a bit. We also started to put in some raised garden beds in the back yard, but I haven't taken any pics of those yet. Stand by and I'll get some of that online in just a few..

Tantrums and a few new brews (Harpoon 100bbl Oyster Stout & Choklat)...

Here's a pic of the few beers me and a few others shared on that Irish day.. what's it called? Anyway..

Actually, looking at it, that Hop Stoopid ain't new to me. Good beer, just not new. There's a review here somewhere on it.. the Harpoon Island Creek Oyster Stout was fairly unremarkable except that it includes oyster juice or something. Me and Jody split this one while brewing up the new Belgian Stout that's in primary right now.. next to it's little brother, the same base wort fermented with Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Bier yeast scavenged from the bottom of a bottle of that beer. Stand by for a sec on that.. Geting back to the Harpoon beer, me and Jody both couldn't get much exemplary out of it except that we both remarked that it tasted "mineral-ly" if that's even a word. Well, it does. And that's about all I can muster on this one.. it was pretty plain. Not that it was bad, cause it wasn't.. it was a solid beer as far as stouts go, but I'm not sure this really stands out for a 100bbl series beer. Hey, just one mans opinion!

That Choklat, however.. hmmmm. Now that's a beer! This is an 11% monster that is disguised as chocolate milk. I'm serious, this thing tastes dead nuts like chocolate milk! It hides the alcohol like a ninja and hides behind a wicked tasty milk chocolate flavor.. and a darned good one at that! This one has huge ratings on Beer Advocate, I see now.. and for good reason. It's a nice treat. I'm not sure I could drink more than one of these in a sitting.. maybe, but not sure. It's so peculiar a flavor for a *beer* (this is a beer, right??), that's it really puzzling to wrap your head around. There's really nothing "stout" about it.. except that it's a legit stout. Say Wha? More interesting is how they packaged a thing like this together and got those flavors out of these base ingredients.. really a testament to what you can do with beer and have have it come out tasting so unlike a beer. Man, I gotta get out of this review, because it's so bizarre, but then.. so is this beer. Go get one, drink it and see if you're not as confused as I am!

And, just to save this for future blackmail use, this awesome clip is a tantrum Lynda threw the other day when her momma told her she couldn't wear rubber rain boots without socks, or just needed to put on some sandals to go outside. Totally awesome stuff. I only grabbed 45 seconds of this tirade, but it went on for some time.. really excellent stuff!



That's all for now.. carry on.