Homegrown (hops)

This year I've had my first decent crop of hops from my garden 300g of Cascade and First Gold. I’m really excited about turning these into a very fresh beer.

I've been growing hops in my garden for a few years now. Hops are perennial plants and take a year or so to establish which means the good crops don't come straight away. My First Gold plant is 3 years old, the Cascade is 2 years old.

Hops like the warmer end of the English climate, and lots of sun. I live in London and have a tiny garden, the hops grow on west and east facing fences. As much as possible I encourage the bines to trail up along trellising and other plants, which isn't optimal and they’s prefer full sun, but looks really good (which is half the point of growing them).

Knowing when to pick the hops is a bit tricky. When the hop flowers are ready depends on the type of plant and the location they are growing in. Commercially September is the peak hop picking time. But my hops weren’t ready that early, in fact mine were only really ready at the end of September.

How do you know when the hops are ready to pick? When they are too young they are wet feeling, perfectly green and when you press them in your fingers they stay compressed for a bit. When they are ready to pick there are some good signs:

• They feel dry and papery
• The tips of some of the leaves go brown
• When compressed the hops spring back to shape quickly
• When you rub the hops in your fingers you get a big hop aroma and the cone disintegrates quickly
• The hops come away easily from the bine

My First Gold hops were ready earlier than the Cascade by 2 weeks, which meant I left the Cascade crop on the bines for a bit longer and picked the First Gold first.

Last year I used the hops straight away. This year I didn't have time to brew straight away and use the hops to make a green hop beer. So i looked into ways of drying the hops at home. Many people opt for a net or screen set up by a sunny window, but by early October the sun isn't reliable like it is in early September so in order to keep the the hops from oxidising too much (which destroys the aromatics) I tried drying them in my oven. The temperature needs to be as low as possible to avoid oxidisation.

For me this was about 40C. I arranged half a kilo on three baking trays for 2-3 hours, stirring the hops every now and then to get an even result. After this time the hops were excellently dried. This removed 80 - 85% of the water (about right) and final weight was between 100g and 80g depending on the batch. I stuffed these into freezer bags, squeezed as much air out as possible and used a food seal clip to attempt to make airtight. Ideally i’d use a vacuum seal, but i don't have one and this would do if i use the hops quickly.

I made a beer with the Cascade hops that I’ll detail in the next post.

A long long list of hops

http://www.morebeer.com/articles/homebrew_beer_hops

Camping hop monster

At the end of August I'm taking the family on a camping trip to a lovely place by the sea in Dorset. There'll be a campfire, there will be singing, there will be ball games. There will be beer. Last year I made an underwhelming IPA with some stale Centennial hops - but I completely underpowered it and it just wasn't any good.

This year I've decided to make a proper monster IPA. I'm using Apollo hops, described by my brewing buddy as "a really big hop" and Ahtanum for a really nice mix of aromatic and full on piny American hop flavour.

The other change is that I'm making this as a wheat malt based IPA. This is mainly because I have a few kgs of wheat malt that need using up, and because I wanted a light bodied pale beer that would let the hops shine through but give some pleasing body. Well, it is a bit of an experiment.

 I made this as a brew in the bag (BIAB) beer - using my temperature controlled boiler as the mash tun. You can see the mash hops bobbing along the top as the mash reaches 65C. Its a bit counter intuitive, as BIAB feels like a bodge rather than rigorous method. Yes, using a converted picnic cooler somehow feels more professional. But now I'm practiced at BIAB it gives a bit more control than the cooler box method. 

Running off the mash liquid. It's a very nice pale straw colour, and it has a very subtle hop flavour from the mash hops. The sweetness of the malt disguises the hop flavour quite significantly. 

 One thing with BIAB is that its tempting to try and get as much of the wort from the grains as possible. This is just a small batch, so I popped the bag in a colander over a jug and managed to get about half a litre further wort out. It's worth it even if that just gets lost in the dry hopping phase.

And here's the wort a mere 12 hours after the yeast starter has been added. There's loads of activity and the bubble lock is bubbling away and looking very healthy. Also smells amazing!


In the mash
2.008 Kg Wheat Malt
0.204 Kg Rolled oats
0.104 Kg Caramel Malt (124 ECB)
10 g Apollo hops
10g Ahtanum hops

Mash in at 65C for 110 minutes, then raise temp to 75C for 10 mins (i figured a longer mash wouldn't hurt with all the oats)

Boil for 60 mins

Hop Schedule

10g Apollo @ 20 mins

15g Apollo @ Whirlpool for 60 minutes @ 70C falling
45g Ahtanum @ Whirlpool for 60 mins  @ 70C falling

Dry hop 15g Apollo and 45g Ahtanum for 10 days.

OG 1050 (higher than intended - i might weaken the wort a bit, I was aiming for 4% abv)

Yeast - Cry Havoc WLP - using yeast starter

Homegrown hops sprouting in springtime

After the long winter nights have passed, and the sun has returned to London the sights of spring are all around us. Daffodils, crocuses and in my garden the first spears of my hop plants. This hop plant is into its third year in the garden. This year the early growth has been really vigorous as it is now well established - so many spears! Last year there were 4 spears. Although i harvested 60g of wet hops from this plant last year, this is the year when it should really come into its own and produce a decent crop.

Its a First Gold plant - an English hedge variety which means it should spread well across a fence - and in my case I want to trail it up and over the fence to soak up the sun on the other side.

I have also put a cascade root into the garden on the opposite fence this year, so it has very slight growth so far but the prospect of having my own cascade hops to brew with was too good to turn down.

I made a beer with the green (ie fresh and un-dried) hops last year - it was okay, if a little overly herbal. I think that owed more to my poor brewing than the hops. I'll have another go in September, and by the looks of it with a bigger harvest to play with.