Grow Your Own (Hops)

Mountain Homebrew & Wine Supply is taking pre-orders for homegrown hops.

Just saw this post from Mtn. Homebrew on facebook. With news of this season's possible impending hop shortage, I must I have one sufficiently sunny spot to try growing some on my own. And even without a shortage, the aroma of fresh hops will be amazing by the end of summer.

An Oven Lauter Tun

Near freezing temperatures last Sunday made maintaining a constant 150º steeping temperature on my "Mother's Day" Organic Farmhouse Belgian Blonde Ale tricky in the garage. I tried wrapping the brew kettle in a blanket. Still, I needed to place it back on the burner from time to time to keep the temperature from plunging. This resulted in a bit of scalding on the bottom of the pot, nothing too serious. In the end, the mash-extract kit from Seven Bridges Cooperative made a beautiful golden wort that I've moved to a secondary fermenter after a successful primary. Twelve weeks in the bottle, and batch #3 will be ready.

Tip of the week: Use your kitchen's oven as a pretty decent lautering temperature control.

This week, I again used my new, larger grain steeping bag for batch #4, an organic Extra Special Bitter mash-extract kit. With a drenching January rain and high winds, I decided to move the first part of the brewing process, the steeping of specialty grains, indoors.

On the stove heat 1.75 gallons of carbon filtered water to 160º in a large enamel canning kettle for the grains. At the same time, preheat the gas oven to 200º to bring oven's pizza stone up to temperature. Pour the specialty grain ingredients into the bag and begin to steep. Bring the oven down to 170º, and place the kettle inside on the stone.


While the steep commences, begin warming two additional kettles of water to 170º, one for sparging, and one to bring the eight gallon boil kettle up to 6.5 gallons of liquid. (My evaporation rate is kind of high, so I have to add an extra 1.5 gallons at the start of the boil.) The steeping kettle in the oven can an almost constant 150º for an hour. You might even need to watch that the temperature doesn't begin to rise toward 160º. If it does, just turn the oven off and pull the kettle out for a few minutes to cool.

My wife still complained about helping to pour hot water over the steeped grains as I held the bag and "gently coached" her on how to properly spread the sparge water around without scalding me. But she didn't complain as much as the last two times when I asked her to perch on a step ladder over the boil kettle outside doing the same job.

Eventually, my brother-in-law stopped by to see the main boil take place, and to help me drink a growler of my batch #1 "Squito" light ale. The ESB kit's step by step brewing instructions suggested adding a pound or two of light honey with the six pounds of liquid malt extract to give the brew a dry finish. The day before, I had bought a pint of River Farm honey from Thorp, WA. Perfect for this batch, but it really boosted the Original Gravity initially.

Homebrew Library Tip: Palmer's "How To Brew" book suggests you should leave the lid off the kettle for the whole boil in order to release sulfur compounds that can give the beer cabbage-like aromas. So, even with frequent strong wind gusts buffeting the burner, that's what we did.

The winds died down by the end of the boil. And during the cold break, the sun appeared and brought temperatures into the middle 50s. I decided to name this batch of organic ESB, "la Nina", in honor of this winter's weather.

Oak Barrels for Homebrew

Vaida Hungarian Oak barrel.

More Beer is advertising 5.3 gallon ($135), 6.1 gallon ($145), and 13.2 gallon ($189) wine barrels that would be the perfect size to age an Imperial Stout or a clone of Hair of the Dog Adam. You'd really want a cellar to properly barrel age a batch at a constant conditioning temperature.

Tip of the week: An Improvised Fermenter Heater

With brew day for my batch #3, "Mother's Day" organic Belgian farmhouse style strong blonde ale only a day away, i resolved to do something about the a very cold week where my fermenter temperatures have been stuck at around 62º F. I visited Mountain Homebrew & Wine Supply at their brand new location, with a plan to buy a FermWrap Heater to sustain a better temperature range in the carboy closet. Since the shop's newsletter had featured the heater just as the cold spell began, they had, of course, sold out long before I got to the store.

FermWrap heater, yet another "must have" gadget for my wish list.

The new store location is just two doors away from the old shop, is twice the size, and has a walk-in cooler with a bank of beer taps. I can't wait to see what they do with those taps. The guys at the store were very excited about a future of serving beer, too. But with no heaters in stock, Kevin had three great suggestions to make my yeast happy.

Kevin's first brilliant suggestion was to heat my fermentation space with an unused carboy full of hot water. My fermentation space is one half of a pine Ikea standing wardrobe with a dividing shelf that I have propped up and reinforced with 2x4s. I can fit two carboys in the top half and two in the bottom half. His next suggestion was to use a drugstore heat pad, which I'm already way too familiar with from strained lower back muscles, to gently warm the carboy(s) or just the space from time to time. I already wrap the carboy(s) in wool and fleece blankets for better insulation, but the third great tip is to get insulation panel material from the hardware store and line the walls and door of the compartment. I can already picture it looking like a pot grow booth, minus the sun lamps. Now I have been able to maintain a temperature between 68º and 70º F for three days running.

More precise control of the fermentation climate is possible with more gadgetry. The recommendation from More Beer is to use a Thermowell probe and a digital temperature controller  with the Fermwrap heater inside a refrigerator. Who knew beer brewing had such a gadget fetish?

Rating Batch #1 Squito Ale

A well carbonated light ale.

Rating for my first homebrew batch, "Squito" Light Ale extract kit with specialty grains. Now that the bottles have a little more carbonation and have sufficiently conditioned, the brew is nearing its intended character.

Aroma: 5 out of 10
Appearance: 3 out of 5
Taste: 5 out of 10
Palate: 3 out of 5
Overall: 14 out of 20
Total Score: 3.0

A session beer reminiscent of a light English bitter. Two finger head fades slowly leaving decent lacing, then disappears after five minutes or so. Aroma of slightly yeasty whole wheat bread. Weak caramel malt backbone allows the comparatively pronounced hop character to come through more than I would have expected. Body loses most carbonation at the bottom of the glass after ten minutes, but the beer is still refreshing to drink. Finishes dry-ish with a a surprising amount of mouth pucker. After another few of weeks of cold conditioning this beer should be at its peak. I could see it reaching 3.2 or 3.3 rating.

Cold Spell, Dry Hopping, and A Chicken in the Pot

Cold Fermentation: The recent Pacific Northwest cold snap (20ºs F at night) has kept the Equinox Double IPA in a very nearly stalled secondary fermentation for just about one week. Temperature in the carboy has hovered near 62º. There was a bit of yeast activity just after racking, but that quickly settled down. Small clusters of bubbles have been forming around the dry hop sacks, but the bulk of sediments have settled to the bottom.

One custom-made dry hop sack.

Dry Hop Sac Tip: My wife was good enough to split a couple of 4"x 6" drawstring hop sacks for me into 2"x 6" bags for dry hopping. Once I soaked the bags in One Step Sanitizer solution for ten minutes, I fished them out, filled three of the sacks with hop pellets, tied them shut, and dropped them into the fermenter with fish line trailing out of the airlock. At first the sacks sink into the beer, but over a couple of days' time they float to the top and stay there. I looked at marbles to use as weights next time, but they all have unknown pigment chemicals in them. Better to find and use some small river rocks.

One free-range hen after a fatal bobcat encounter.

Bobcat Attack: At dusk one of a family of three neighborhood bobcats jumped our fence and lightly mauled one of our chickens. My young son and daughter chased the cat away, over another fence into a neighbor's yard. The chicken's neck was snapped, and the left leg had a decent sized puncture wound at the hip. The bird died almost instantly. This lead me to find another good use for my borrowed propane burner - chicken de-feathering water warmer. It turns out the best temperature to soften up the skin to de-anchor the bird's feathers is the same as you'd use in a mash - between 150º and 160º, according to  Jennifer Megyesi in, "The Joy of Keeping Chickens: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Poultry for Fun or Profit". I can't say my first chicken cleaning effort was perfect - I lost the liver, and made a mess of the gizzard - but the bird looks beautiful in the refrigerator, and is sure to taste wonderful accompanied with a glass of homebrew.