We Love IPAs

In December, we bottled Hump’s Hooch. Holy moly, it was good. Hopped with a blend of Zeus, Simcoe, and Amarillo whole leaf hops, six ounces in total, it really scratched that gotta-have-hops itch.

Sadly, it was shortlived. We didn’t even get a chance to save some for competition before the keg ran dry.

It ran dry while we were brewing a follow-up: Hump’s Last Minute IPA. I had hoped instead to make an India Wheat Ale (like a hefeweizen, but with lots and lots of hop character). But the usual homebrew store was closed that day, and the second string store (Hop City in midtown Atlanta) – though awesome as a bottle shop with an amazing selection of commercial beer – was not an effective substitute. Due to their prices and selection, we had to make numerous last minute adjustments to the recipe. An India Wheat Ale was no longer in the cards, so we ended up just making a regular IPA instead.

And this upcoming Sunday, 3/20, is a Brew Day. We’re making… another IPA! This will be our 100th original recipe. So we’re calling it Hump’s 100!

Peach State Brew Off

The Last Minute IPA we made is tasty, but it didn’t fare that great in the Peach State Brew Off (which wrapped up and awarded medals last Saturday, 3/12). I dig it, so I’m not too concerned that judges did not.

We entered a few other brews into that contest, too:

• Hump’s Naughty Monk Ale: Our watermelon-infused Belgian Tripel (the one made with real watermelon puree, not extract) was sent in and scored higher than any of our other entries. Final score: 32.5 out of 50 (better than it sounds as 30-37 is the “very good” range). But certainly no 45 (which is what Hump’s Old Humperdink Barley Wine scored at last year’s Peach State Brew Off).
• Hump’s 10th Anniversary: This beer was a great big amber ale – with a lot more hops and malt used than in a typical amber ale. Alas, judges did not agree. One said it seemed like a normal American Amber Ale – not an “Indian” Amber Ale. I’ve had a lot of amber ales in my day, and that judge is smoking crack. They must have a serious hop-bomb entry beforehand to make this one seem muted, because – to me – it was way too big (over 7% abv) and had way too much hop aroma and flavor to be a normal amber ale entrant.
• Hooch: This wasn’t, technically, a Hump’s brew. It was brewed by friend and fellow home-brewer, Scott Stinson. He brews with extract, so I converted the recipe for Hump’s Hooch from all-grain to mini-mash, and he cooked it up. We entered it as a “team” entry, with both our names on it. I’m a bit lost on the judges comments. They indicated that it was watery and not very bitter. Did they have the same beer? It was fairly full-bodied and extremely hoppy. It was also drier than many commerical examples and was quite drinkable, especially given its strength and massive amounts of hops. It’s really disappointing to see comments like this – that don’t even seem to describe the right beer… One suggested it would do well as an American Pale Ale entry – at nearly 8%abv?!?!? (not to mention 6 ounces of high alpha hops…)
• Hump’s Chocolate Milkshake: The lowest score of all the entries. Admittedly, that was expected. I felt it was definitely the weakest. Surprisingly the judges seemed to like it, but they felt that I may have miscategorized it: I entered it as a spice/herb/vegetable beer due to the cocoa nibs and vanilla bean and put the “base style” as robust porter. They didn’t think the base beer was robust enough. Strangely, they said the chocolate character was strong and the vanilla character was too low. That is the complete opposite of my own impression of the beer. I can barely taste any chocolate other than character from chocolate malt (not real cocoa flavor), but I can taste lots of vanilla. Maybe they don’t know what these ingredients are supposed to taste like???

You can read the judges’ feedback for yourself by checking out the Contests page.

Perhaps we’ll have better luck next year.

Hop Plants

Two of our four hop plants are already growing back this year. The Willamette is the surprise star of the garden right now. Chinook has just started to show some tiny leaves. No sign yet of Horizon (which I’m looking forward to trying if it ever grows and flowers) or Centennial (which, unfortunately, is even worse than the Horizon – I will be mildly surprised if it actually comes back at all this year…).

I’ll have two weeks of time off coming up soon, so the wife and I hope to make some progress on the garden. Perhaps we can get it in better shape than last year, and that the effort will help everything stay alive. Less heat would help, too. Last year’s crazy hot summer burned up everything in the garden. We didn’t even collect 1/2 ounce of hops from four plants last year. Depressing…

Muddy Rye

We’ve recently tapped into Hump’s Smoked Rye Porter – made with two pounds of smoked malt and four pounds of rye malt. The result: a tasty beer with a nice hop aroma, too (decent bit of Amarillo and Simcoe late hops). The downside: the texture is way too thick.

The Roggendoppelbock turned out this way, too: incredibly viscous, especially considering the final SG reading (1.017 for the smoked porter). The Wry Wit we made last year also used a lot of rye, but it did not exhibit this symptom. So we turned to the internet to investigate the what-for.

One fact worth pointing out: we employed a protein rest for the Wry Wit, due to using lots of unmalted grains (flaked barley, flaked rye, and flaked oats). Did the protein rest “fix” the viscosity for that earlier brew?

Most of what I’ve read suggests that a beta glucan rest is what is actually called for when using large amounts of rye, oats, or unmalted grains. But at 122 degrees (the temperature of the protein rest I employed in making Wry Wit), beta-glucanase and cytase are also active. So, at that temperature, protein and beta-glucan rests are combined (at least to some degree).

So I’m going to give rye another go this spring, and use a beta-glucan rest at 110 degrees to see if it fixes this issue. And if not, I’ll try another one later with another protein rest…

Dishearteningly, I can’t find anyone describing exactly the same problem I’m having. Most suggest that these rests just reduce viscosity and gumminess of the mash, making lautering easier and faster. I did have very slow sparges with both the smoked porter and the roggendoppelbock, but the viscosity problem I’m having is in the finished product, not just the mash.

Doggone it, I’m going to figure this out! What a fun way to do science experiments, eh?

Burton Baton

I just drank a new bottle of Dogfish Head Burton Baton and am now opening an old bottle (3 years old). My are they different. No offense to the old guy, but this beer is better fresh.

Admittedly, my three-year old bottle tasted “old” even when I bought it. My review of the beer from 2007 indicated a beer that was very malty and not particularly hoppy – definite barleywine territory (despite being labeled as an Imperial IPA). Three years have done nothing, obviously, for its hop presence.

The fresh stuff – still more like an American Barleywine than an Imperial IPA – is a wonderfully balanced, big, delicious beer. The old stuff has lost all pretense of hop aroma and is cloying in the nose.

The flavor of the old stuff is quite smooth and actually very good. But, man, is it sweet. It tastes like candy… malted barley candy. It has just enough hints of hops in various areas (subtle bitter fruit, subtle evergreen, subtle citrus orange) to balance the big-ass wave of candy-sweet malts. So it is actually drinkable – not too cloyingly sweet in flavor. But not drinkable enough to have a pint. It sits quite heavy in the gut (even the fresher stuff). That and the fact that it’s a strong beer, make me reconsider the idea of opening two of them. Oh, well — I’ll call it a nightcap and hope it help me sleeps…

Running On Empty

We had a brew day a few weeks ago, and it was very successful: our overgrown stock of fine beer was vastly diminished. We still have an absolutely silly amount of fantastic beers sitting around, but two homebrew kegs (out of three) now sit empty.

We will be filling one of them on Monday with Hump’s Union Jack Bitter — the beer that we made on the brew day. It is currently sitting on a half ounce of U.K. First Gold hops and isn’t due to come off until Monday.

The one remaining keg stores the remainder of Hump’s Irish Dry Stout. I totally dig this beer, but I sort of miss not having a hoppy one around. And that’s why the next two beers we’re cooking up will be such a perfect fit.

This weekend we’ll brew Hump’s Cascade Pale Ale. If there ever were a stereotypical beer (other than the sea of stereotypical bland pale lagers), this is it: an American Pale Ale… made with Cascade hops. It seems that every brewpub has a beer like this — it is required fare for almost any craft/small brewer in the country. Is this kind of beer overdone? Nah…

I enjoy Cascade hops, and I love hoppy pale ales. We’ll see if we can make something truly exceptional out of what amounts to the “apple pie and baseball” of American craft beer.

And after that we’ll be making a truly special brew – another Imperial IPA. We may end up making it next week. (Is brewing back to back weeks insane? Didn’t think so…) This will be no ordinary Impy though. It will be our first attempt at a single-hop Imperial IPA (our last single-hop brew, Old Humperdink, was a wonderful success). What hop variety you ask? Magnum. Were it a normal-strength IPA, we might call it “Magnum IPA”, but this is a Double IPA. So what do you call a “double magnum”? A Jeroboam. So we’ll call this one Hump’s Jeroboam.

Perhaps we’ll have an opportunity to empty our Jeroboam of Stone’s Double Bastard and fill it with our own Jeroboam brew. Is it just me, or does that seem poetic?

Hot Liquor

We’ve now made a couple of batches using the latest gadgets added to our hot liquor tank. Back in December, I had a 15.5-gallon Sankey keg converted into a hot liquor tank. We chopped the top off (losing about 1 gallon of volume), added a thermometer, and added a spigot.

The latest gadgets: we put a down-tube on the inside of the keg, attached to the spigot. This means that we can extract almost 100% of the hot water since the tube pokes down close to the bottom of the pot. We also added a sight glass.

Having a nice hot liquor tank setup definitely takes some of the “chore” away from all-grain brewing. It makes it much easier to hit my dough-in temperatures and is easier-to-use to boot.

Competitions

We used our 5 Seasons Westside gift certificate (part of the prize for placing 5th in the BEERmuda Triangle Competition) the other day, sampling their Plan B IPA poured through the world’s largest Randall: a conical fermentor packed with Willamette hops. Apparently, since the conical is so big, they just dumped a keg of Plan B into it after filling it with hops (it must have been either not completely full or very loosely filled with hops – because that seems like a waste of so much hops otherwise since most of them would have such little contact time with the beer…). They then opened the transfer valve on the bottom of the conical to pour each pint. It was a damn tasty pint. I was amazed by the fact that the flavor was not that radically transformed. I tried another sampler (just two ounces) of the normal Plan B that night, and the two tasted almost the same. The Randallized one was a little hoppier in aroma, but the biggest difference was actually the mouthfeel. The Randall must impart loads and loads of hop oils or other mouth-filling compounds, because it was very full-bodied. Chewy… but not in a bad way. Delicious in fact. Another big difference between the two versions of this IPA: the Randallized one was way cloudier.

Speaking of the BEERmuda Triangle Homebrew Competition, we entered brews into Georgia’s Peach State Brew Off this year. The PSBO is an AHA-sanctioned event, so we got BJCP-certified feedback on the beers we entered.

How did we do? Old Humperdink received 45 points (!!!) and got honorable mention. I know, I know – I ask myself the same question. “How the hell did three other beers score better than 45?!?!?! Were the judges wasted?” Maybe… It was a record number of entrants, and I’d heard they were frantic to get a sufficient number of judges lined up for it…

We also got high marks for La Brabançonne. The scoresheet indicated that it also moved on to the Best of Show round. Back-Breaking Brown (my personal favorite) received good marks but not as high as I had hoped.

You can see the feedback I received on the latest page that I’ve added to this site: Contests (click Brews, and you’ll see the link there).

We currently have four entries in the NHC. I believe the first round judging is supposed to take place tomorrow. To be honest, I almost hope that some of our beers do not make it to the second round because that means I get to keep the other bottles (which I set aside just in case they advance) and drink them myself (or with suitable company of course).

Hop Plants

Our hop plants are coming back this year and all looking fantastic. The worst looking plant is the Horizon plant, but even it looks to be doing fine. The Centennial, which did horribly last year and didn’t produce a single flower, is looking great. The Willamette and the Chinook are off the hook.

We’ll be getting hog-fencing and rebar this week to make a new, taller trellis for the vines to crawl up.

We were hoping to add another bed of hop plants to the garden, but – alas – no dice. Doug at Just Brew It only received orders for 7 rhizomes. Four of those seven orders were from me. Unfortunately, it costs him about $100 to ship the rhizomes as they must be sent very quickly and in temperature/humidity controlled transit so as to maximize their viability when they go into the ground. Doug’s prices were already set much lower than the pro-rata shipping costs alone, so he couldn’t afford to deliver. Doug was super-nice about it. He regretfully informed us of the situation, gave us store credit for what he’d already collected, and offered to give us a free potted hop plant from his personal garden. I politely declined the plant (though he may still bring it in to his store and try to give it me) because I didn’t feel it was necessary – I completely understand and empathize with the situation. And it’s not like anyone lost any money. Were I that set on having more hop plants, I could mail order them myself. But four is a fine number, so we’ll stick with that… for now.

Scotch Whisky

The morning of brew day, I had a couple of birthday gifts to snag. So I headed to the liquor store. (Where else?!) I nabbed a nice bottle of beer and a nice bottle of wine for the two friends whose birthdays I had missed and while there nabbed a bottle of Scotch for myself.

I was hoping to find the Uigeadail expression of Ardbeg – a distiller from Islay. It was not to be found (and I’ve called a few other places around — it’s just plain hard to find in this part of Georgia). But I did grab their flagship: Ardbeg 10 year.

This one packs a punch. It isn’t as intense, medicinal, or crazy strong as the cask-strength 10-year-old Laphroaig I have, but it is much more intense than the Lagavulin and Talisker (all but the last being also from Islay; Talisker hails from Skye). It is smoky and crazy phenolic. But in a good way — at least if your palate is like mine – which, luckily, mine happens to be! ;)

And Now…

Your moment of Zen:

Rock Art Brewing has come under flagrant legal attack from the makers of Monster Energy Drinks. They received a cease and desist order asking them to stop the production and marketing of their “Vermonster” barley wine. The makers of Monster Energy Drink, Hansen Beverage Company, claim that the beer’s label is a copyright infringement – which is pretty obviously bollocks.

To support Rock Art Brewing, boycott Monster Energy Drinks. And show your support by buying something from the Rock Art Brewing online store – like a shirt or a glass or something!

RIP Greg Noonan

Gregory J. Noonan, a pioneer craft brewer that started Vermont’s first brew pub and author of Brewing Lager Beers, died this past Sunday, October 11^th. I had not heard of or read anything of Mr. Noonan prior to hearing about his passing, but various beer authors on the web have written tributes describing his legacy. I’ve put his book on my Amazon shopping list to learn firsthand more about this man’s work posthumously.

In Progress…

On the homebrew front, we’ve got a couple of new ones racing for an opportunity to be consumed.

Hump’s Devilish Nectar is a Belgian Strong Golden Ale that is finally almost finished – after five weeks of slow fermentation. The beer is finally down to 1.014 (9.4%abv!). I think it will get even lower (1.010 -> 1.012), so I’m patiently waiting. The yeast are still in suspension and there is still the occasional bubble slipping loose from the fermentation lock.

Hump’s Estate-Hopped Rye is a Rye Pale Ale made with our homegrown hops. We just brewed it this past Sunday (10/11), but it’s already mostly finished. Attenuation appears to be complete. Now, we just wait for the yeast to flocculate and fall out. This beer is very malty with a restrained rye character and a somewhat restrained hoppiness. The hop plants were not very productive this year, so we didn’t harvest enough to make a hop bomb. But it does have a distinctly grassy hop flavor throughout that is quite pleasant – and quite a surprise for Chinook hops (which are usually resiny and piney/evergreen, sometimes with grapefruity bitter citrus).

This musical treat was offered up to exalt my latest achievement: 700 ratings.

Somehow, these milestones never feel like a chore, no matter how long they take me (so unlike my day job…).

The brew was marvelously – perhaps even ridiculously – thick with the taste of espresso beans. It is a strong (8% abv) sweet stout loaded up with Jittery Joe’s espresso. A very nice way to close out a rough week at the office and usher in not only the weekend but also what will hopefully be a wonderful Autumn. The weather sure has been nice here lately, anyway.

For those of you that read these posts via Google Reader or other RSS reader/aggregator, you’ll find I post much more frequently in the form of status updates for Hump’s Brewing’s Facebook page. For those that read these posts from Facebook, you’ve already noticed this recent phenomenon.

For the benefit of those not yet on Facebook (likely few), I’ll recap the past couple of months…

Devilish Nectar

I cooked up Hump’s Devilish Nectar nearly 4 weeks ago. It will be a Belgian Strong Golden Ale – like Duvel, Delirium Tremens, or Piraat. Unfortunately, this batch appears to have gotten “stuck”. After nearly 3 weeks of fermentation, it was still up at around 1.030. It is still fermenting, albeit very slowly. At this rate, it may be quite some time before it finishes attenuating – at will hopefully be a nice and dry 1.010 or so.

I’ve already tried lugging the fermentor up from the basement (since it is usually about 3-4 degrees warmer upstairs), but that didn’t appear to jump-start it in any significant way… And now that beautiful fall weather is here, it’s cooling off upstairs and down.

Estate-Hopped Rye

I already harvested my hop plants this year. After drying, the yield was quite small – about 2 ounces total. I have 1.5 ounces of Chinook, 0.1 ounces of Horizon, and about 3/8 ounces of Willamette.

My plan is to cook up a Rye Pale Ale pretty soon using all of them – hopefully next weekend (10/10).

Old Humperdink

I bought a bunch of half-priced whole-leaf Zeus hops a few months ago with the intent of using them in a big, bad American Barley Wine. I still haven’t brewed that batch because it has been too warm in the basement for a clean fermentation of such a big beer.

Now that the weather is cooling off, I should be able to get to it soon – perhaps I’ll cook it up on Halloween day!

But I promise to get pictures soon. I have to show everyone my new rig. I just bought this week a three-tier metal frame for all-grain brewing – professionally built by the operator of my local homebrew store. He was very generous in price since this piece was a “pilot” rig. It was one of his earlier ones that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of more recent systems that he’s built.

Along with a rig that will make brewing much, much easier, I also upgraded my propane setup. I bought a new regulator, new fittings, and some longer hoses to get (supposedly) four or five times the heating capacity out of it. Apparently, turkey fryer systems come with gas lines, fittings, and regulators that limit output to 30,000-50,000 BTUs. But with the upgraded equipment, It’s been suggested that I’ll see 175,000 BTUs. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll be able to heat up water way faster than before, which should make brew day go faster.

The three tiers alone would make brew day go faster, too. No more lifting heavy, full pots or mash tuns to gravity feed to the next step. Everything is at the right height to naturally feed down to the next tier. The only lifting I’d have to do is during an uncommon decoction mash: I’d have to feed mash out of the tun and into the kettle and then lift it up to the top tier to boil it and then feed back into the mash tun. Since a decoction is usually only a gallon or two (at least when I’ve done it in the past), it’s not hard to lift…

I still have a little more to put into my rig, but I have time. It’s just right for now. My next step will be to convert a 1/2-barrel keg into a hot liquor tank. I fear that may warrant a special occasion like a birthday or something before I spend the money on that upgrade. It can be done very cheaply, but I have my eye on a few things that would make it much easier to use but at a potentially hefty price (like building in a thermometer probe and a sight glass).

Village Idiot

My friend and co-worker, Rob Homer, has begun brewing this year. I took the whole family over to his house last weekend to brew a batch with him and to taste his first creation – an English Brown Ale that was based on a modified recipe of my own: Hump’s Holiday Ale 2007. And Malin and Will got to hang out with Tracy and their three kids (all of them are older than Will but played well with him).

Rob’s brew turned out pretty tasty. And it is remarkably different than the homebrew of mine on which it was based. The spices are almost imperceptible (whereas I think they were too strong in my brew). The finish is fuller and sweeter (which I kind of like). It has a very English character to it from the yeast, decent depth and complexity, and is smooth and without any real flaws. It may have a bit of extract “twang”, but it’s hard for me to tell. I could never pinpoint the twang in my extract homebrews, but I did feel that was something was slightly “off” about it – and it was something I detected in Rob’s brew too. Once I started using more specialty grains, the off flavors seemed to fade from my beers – as far as I could tell anyway. Quality took another jump when I went to doing a 5-6 pound mini-mash in every batch. Going to all-grain hasn’t seen a similar jump in quality, but it is more rewarding on days where everything goes right. And it also gives you more control over the finished product, so I think it’s worth it overall (despite the amount of cussing I do on brew day).

Rob has told me that he is not a fan of really bitter beers, but he did express an appreciation for the smell of hops (one good whiff of your hop ingredients while you’r brewing and you’re hooked). He remarked about how he wanted to change up a kit IPA recipe he has, moving some of the bittering hops towards the end or just using them as dry hops instead. So I took some commerical brews for him to try – two beers that, based on what he’s told me about beers he likes, I was pretty certain he was going to like (Clipper City Heavy Seas Hang Ten Weizenbock and Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout), one total unknown (Allagash Grand Cru), and one that he’d likely have trouble with (Sierra Nevada Bigfoot). He loved the immense, fresh hop aroma and balanced, malty finish of the Sweetwater Happy Ending (who doesn’t!!??). I left the rest with him. He has since called to tell me that he really loved the Allagash Grand Cru and that he did not care for the Bigfoot. C’est la vie!

So while I was there, we cooked up a Belgian Wit. It began life as a Hefeweizen kit that he received for Christmas. But it included a plain dry yeast (not even a Weizen yeast – just normal ale yeast). So we jazzed it up. We added some flaked wheat, flaked oats, and 2-row malt (the lattermost having sufficient enzyme content to convert the proteins and starches in the unmalted grain into sugars) and then some Curaçao orange peel and some ground coriander. Finally, we pitched liquid Witbier yeast to make sure the finished product had the right qualities.

It will probably be ready for him to keg this weekend, so maybe I’ll get to try the fruits of our labor this upcoming week.

And next time I brew, Rob has asked to tag along to see the all-grain process. It will likely be a little bit like the last time I had company: my friend Jason helped me cook up an Imperial IPA that turned out awesome, but he got to see me stumble through the steps (it was only my second batch on my all-grain rig at the time). This time it will be my first batch on the brand new rig, so I’m sure there will be some more stumbling. But if the beer turns out anywhere near as good as that last time then it will be more than worth it.

BTW, he calls his brews Village Idiot (hence the title of this section).

‘Tis the Season

It’s that time of year again: hop rhizomes are coming to stores soon. I placed my order today. I’ve got seven rhizomes coming: three for me and four for Rob (he’s really diving head first into home brewing). In addition to my current Chinook plant, I’ll be adding Centennial, Willamette, and Horizon plants. I ordered Cascade, Mount Hood, and two Willamettes for Rob (though we may go back and forth before the final split is really nailed down).

Despite last year’s disappointment (no hop cones popped up, so no fresh hop homebrew), I’m hopeful about this year’s prospects. We moved the Chinook plant to a garden we recently built up (freshly cultivated with high quality soil). It should fare much better there than its previous home. We’ll also be wiring it up differently so hopefully it will run and run and grow and grow (along with the three new plants, of course). I’ve heard that Centennial can be a little fragile, especially if there’s too much moisture where it is planted (susceptible to mold), but if it thrives, that will be awesome. It and Columbus are probably my favorite two hops right now (and Columbus is apparently far too fragile to reliably grow here in the south).

Life has been good over the past month. It has been very busy, but has seen a decent bit of great beer…

I went on vacation to Boston in the earlier part of June. The notable beer-related highlight was our trip to Cambridge Brewing Company, within walking distance of where my brother lives (if I were him, I’d probably be spending way too much time there…). We also visited the Watch City Brewing Company, which had very decent ales (not as adventurous or interesting as Cambridge Brewing, but tasty nevertheless) and delicious fries. Watch City is in Waltham, also home to Brandeis University (a friend and coworker of mine has a son that is a student there). The other beer destination was in our obligatory trip to the Samuel Adams Brewery. This is a brewery operated by Boston Beer Company in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood not far from Boston proper. You might already know that the Sam Adams we all drink is brewed under contract by various brewers around the country. This brewery is their pilot brewery, where they develop recipes that will then be forwarded to their various contractors. The plain ol’ Boston Lager was okay – I think I’ve had better in the bottle as brewed by some of their contractors. Their Summer Ale, however, was fantastic – much better than I remembered it from the bottle… Unfortunately, we were not able to fit in a trip to the Harpoon Brewery (the schedule on which they open for tours did not mesh with ours).

We did more than just beer stuff in Boston. We did some tourist stuff, visited the MIT Museum (among other things), and ate good food. You know – the usual :)

Other beer news since last month: I have tasted some absolutely phenomenal beers. Allagash Hugh Malone and Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse absolutely blew me away. They were both fantastic: sublime, decadent, complex, hoppy, and drinkable all at the same time. And then I tried Allagash Interlude. Whoah! Complex, wine-like, intoxicating, alluring, mysterious, and untouchable. Words to describe it escape me. An amazing blend of fruit and sourness that still retains a distinct grain (i.e. beer) quality but is dangerously refined. Wine, watch out!

We’ve had quite the adventure on the homebrew front around here, too. For one, Hump’s Itsy Bitsy Bitter – my first all-grain batch – is already gone. It wins no awards in this department: it lasted 3 ¹/₂ weeks in the keg, and it is only gone because I dispensed about a gallon of it into bottles tonight (for sharing with friends and family, and a four-pack of label-less 12-ounce bottles, possibly destined for a competition). The record is a scant three weeks from kegging to completion. That honor went to Hump’s American Schwarzbier – my first kegged batch of homebrew (which was quite tasty, by the way). The last glass of bitter (fresh in my mind from earlier this night) was really good – remarkably flavorful for such a light beer (only 3.8%abv): bready and malty but without much sweetness and with a very pleasant, well-balanced hop bitterness that was earthy with a light touch of bitter citrus. I was happy enough with it to save some for a competition…

Other homebrews have been happening, too:

• Hump’s Brain Bludgeoner has turned out great. It is one of the best-looking beers I’ve made. It is bright with a deep orange/copper color and immense, long-lasting, egg-white-like, light-tan foam. The aroma is intense – not nearly as hoppy as I’d hoped, but intense nevertheless with all kinds of fruity esters and complex malt aromatics. The flavor is also remarkably well-balanced. Not as hoppy as I’d hoped (you’d never guess that there was nearly a half-pound of high-alpha hops in there), but quite pleasing. The malt profile is complex with some caramel and toffee sweetness along with some roasted grain character and a light graininess from the base grain: American 2-row barley. The fermentation-derived esters and hops play nicely together giving the beer a fantastic array of complex yet tasty flavors. It did, luckily, continue to ferment. After two weeks of fermentation it had only attenuated down to a specific gravity of 1.028. Luckily it made it down below 1.020 before kegging. It still isn’t as dry (or hoppy) as I had intended, but – as so often is the case – it turned out delicious despite its variations from my original objective.
• Hump’s Bosbessenbier (which is Dutch for Blueberry Beer) was cooked up and is now re-fermenting alongside 4.5 pounds of blueberries. I’m hoping that isn’t too much fruit – the beer is quite purple in color, like red wine, and smells strongly of blueberry wine. The beer before adding the fruit was fantastic – a delicious Belgian golden ale (a modest gravity pale ale with low hopping and fermented with a strain that is reputably sourced from Brouwerij Achouffe (a maker of delicious Belgian ales).
• Hump’s German Hefeweizen hit the keg tonight (it filled the void left by the absence of Itsy Bitsy Bitter – literally). Uncarbonated, the beer tastes great. It has a nice, palpable level of wheat malt with typical fermentation characteristics of Bavarian wheat beers – esters and phenols. Unlike the last Hefeweizen I brewed (a Pumpkin Hefeweizen that I made for my sister’s wedding), this beer has a perfect balance of esters and phenols (the pumpkin brew tasted distinctly of bananas, thanks to the esters produced by the weizen yeast).

Finally, we have some news on the hop front: our Mount Hood hop plant bit the dust this week. It started off quite slowly and then, amazingly, took off in growth, catching up with our other plant, the Chinook. But only a week or two after writing up my last post about them, the Mount Hood seemed to stop growing while the Chinook plant really took off. The Chinook hops are now up to my chest, and if I were to unwind the vine from around the poles it is growing up, it would probably measure about 6 feet in length. So it has grown substantially since my last set of photos, and continues to grow everyday. If I can get six ounces of hops out of the Chinook plant (which I think is highly likely) then it will have proved economical in the long run. I’m actually quite excited about the prospect of brewing a pale ale this fall with fresh, “wet”, homegrown Chinook hops.

We have noticed evidence of growth – as much as an inch or two just in one day. But that has only been very recently – since we put a thick bed of mulch around them and started watering them everyday.

With luck, the plants’ new treatment will cause stellar growth. I can’t say I’m holding my breath though.

Here are pictures of our two little plants:

Chinook

Mount Hood

I used two pounds of rye malt in my recipe. Doug mentioned that he and his friends have designed plenty of rye pale ale recipes, too, and that they’ve found that one pound – or maybe even a little less – is just right. Even one and a half pounds is a little too much since some of the flavors in the rye begin to detract from the finished beer when it is present in too large a quantity. I don’t mind the “Reeb” finished product – in fact I like it a lot. But the rye flavor is certainly strong – at least when drinking the first one. If you have a second helping, you don’t notice as much :)

While at the homebrew store I bought three ounces of high-alpha hops – the final acquisition of luscious hops for my upcoming double IPA. While there I also decided to do my part to help out with the hop shortage by purchasing a couple of hop rhizomes. This, of course, is also a hedge against decreasing hop availability and rising hop prices – and it’s just plain fun! They are already starting to produce shoots, protruding from the dirt. Malin is planning their final planting location in the yard and has already designed a trellis for the vines once they start to get big. The hop vines can grow as long as 20′ in the first year; and, once they are mature and really growing (not sure how many years go by before that happens, but it apparently doesn’t happen in the first year), they can grow as much as 1′ per day! We’re pretty stoked. Doug says that his hop plants grow great, despite our not having a climate like the classic hop producing regions (Pacific Northwest US, Southern Germany, and Southeast England).

I bought one rhizome each of Mount Hood – a US aroma hop based on a German Hallertauer cultivar – and Chinook – another US hop that is high in alpha acids (so it is frequently used for bittering) and has strong notes of evergreen (pine needles) with some bitter citrus (grapefruit).