Single Hop Pale Ale (Cascade) - Tasting

I brewed this pale ale about a month and a half ago.  It's lost a bit of hop character over the period but it's still plenty hoppy.  When it was young it was almost like a session IPA.  It has now become a nicely balanced beer.

Due to fairly low alcohol it's also easy drinking and refreshing as the humidity and heat of East Coast Summer is setting in.  It was a good decision to deviate away from the original recipe's 6.3% ABV.

Really happy that I still have more than half this batch left after a month and a half.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• The beer is not very aromatic at this point.  Much of the hop aroma has faded to a slight grassy smell.  I also get some sweet malt aroma.  When it was fresher the hop aroma was bold - it was clear that it was the major contributor to my favorite IPA:  Four Peaks Hop Knot.
• Appearance:
• It is a copper color.  The various bottles that I've tried have had variable levels of carbonation.  Early bottles were highly carbonated but some of the later bottles were fairly low carbonation - I suspect that there was an issue with mixing in the priming sugar.  The bottles used for this tasting were both well carbonated.  The head quickly settles down to a thin layer.  The beer is very clear but there is some hop particulate matter floating that got through even with a gentle pour.
• Flavor:
•  Up front, the beer has a nice mix of sweet and toasty malt with a fruity hop character.  The finish has an assertive bitterness which is balanced by a fairly substantial malt flavor.  Not much contribution from the alcohol or yeast from a flavor standpoint that I'm able to pick out.
• Mouthfeel:
• The beer is medium bodied.  The carbonation level is fairly after the pour so it's not very spritzy.  It is a pretty smooth beer - no astringency.
• Overall:
•   It's a nicely balanced beer (SN Pale Ale like).  It was good when the dry hops were still a major contributor but I prefer the more balanced flavor it has now (which is really what I was hoping for with this beer).  I has nice refreshment value with the fairly low alcohol level.  It's a nice, flavorful, summer beer.

English Barleywine II

Last Memorial Day I made a Barleywine that aged for 6 months before having my first taste around Christmas time.  This was the first recipe that I designed myself and, although I failed to meet almost all of my objectives with the beer, I really enjoyed the whole process of brewing and aging it.  I have decided to try my hand at this beer again.

My goals for this beer are the same as last time with one addition:

1. Golden/Pale Color - Last year's beer was darker than I would have liked.  This may have been due to the Crystal 40L I used or it could have been from the 140 min boil.  I'm going to stick with Crystal 10L this time and I'll plan for enough sparge water to just get myself a 90 min boil.  My grain bill is predicted to get me a 10.07 SRM which is a nice gold color.
2. Approximately 9% alcohol -  I missed this one by a large margin last time ending up with an 11.2% beer.  This was a combination of a much higher than expected efficiency (77%) and high attenuation (83%).  This time I"m going to make sure that the beer goes into the fermentor at a gravity of 1.095 by adding water to dilute if necessary.
3. FG of ~1.025 - Missed this mark quite a bit as well, having the beer get down to 1.016.  I had initially thought a low mash temp of 150 F, with all the crystal malt I used, would create sufficient sugars to hit that gravity.  This time I'm going to mash at 154 F to see if that helps.  I'll also be going with Wyeast 1968 "London ESB" which is spec'd to ferment to the low 70% attenuation and to stop at around 9% ABV.  If it meets these spec's for me then the beer should end up right around 1.025.
4. Balanced hop character - I don't think I planned for enough bitterness last time as there wasn't really any noticeable bitterness left by the time I drank the last one 6 months after brewing.  I went with about 70 IBU with the last beer where about half of that was in flavor hops.  I'm going to go with something like 100 IBU for this beer which will hopefully keep a bit more bitterness after 6 months
5. Simple Grain bill - last grain bill was simple with just base and a few types of Crystal malt.  I'm going to use two base grains for this one (Maris Otter and Vienna) and just stick with one Crystal (10L).  Not sure how that's going to turn out.
6. Clarity - New goal driven by the cloudiness of last year's beer.  I think it may have had something to do my my bottle carb'ing yeast, EC-1118 Wine yeast, which also gave me trouble with my Strong Brown Ale.  I had much better luck with Premier Cuvee which is what I'll use this time.

Last year I split the batch and oaked half with brandy soaked cubes while the other was plain.  I preferred the oak half.  So, I'll be oaking the entire batch this time.  No brandy this time though and I'll be giving the beer 4-5 months in secondary rather than the 3 weeks I gave the last one.  Based on that I'll be going with 1 oz on the whole 6 gal which is about half by volume of what I used previously.

I bought a refractometer to use for this batch which I"m hoping will allow me to better handle the sparging.  I have also chosen to use my old mash tun due to some cleaning issues with the new, false bottom version.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 12 lbs Maris Otter
• 8 lbs Vienna
• 2 lbs Crystal 10L
• 5 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 2 oz Challenger (Pellet, 8.9% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 5.7% AA) at 20 min
• 1 oz Kent Golding (Pellet, 4.2% AA) at 20 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast (Second pitch from this beer)
• Red Star Premier Cuvee (bottle conditioning)
• Water:
• 13 gal spring water
• 1 oz Calcium Chloride
• 1 oz Gypsum
• 1 oz Irish Moss at 20 min
• Extras:
• 1 oz Medium Toast Hungarian Oak Cubes

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 156 F for 60 min (Target 154 F for 60 min)
• Boil:
• 140 min (Target 90 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 65 F
• Primary Duration:
• 4 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 5 months

Results:

• OG:
• 1.096 (Target 1.095)
• Efficiency:
• 71% (Target 70%)
• FG:
• 1.006 (Target 1.025)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 93% (Target 72%)
• ABV:
• 11.81% (Target 9.19%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5/25/15 - Brew day - 6:20 AM to 11:30 AM including setup and cleanup
• Brought 8 gal up to 183 F - Took 30 min
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the mash tun
• Added 28 qt of water to the mash tun and let settle for 10 min - ended up at 175 F
• Added the grain, stirring well to eliminate dough balls
• After 10 min the mash was in the high 150s.  Stirred until it got down to 156-157 F
• Stirred the mash at 30 min - temp was at 156 F

• Brought 6 gal up to 200 F - took 25 min
• Stirred the mash again at 45 min - tamp was at 155 F
• After 60 min gave it a final stir, vorlaufed, and then drained slow at first and then quick.  Collected about 4 gal.  Measured the gravity at this point with my new refractometer which measured as 22.8 brix which is 1.096.
• Added a 3 gal for a batch sparge which brought the temperature to 170 F.  Stirred, vorlaufed, and then drained.  This got me up to 7 gal.  The gravity of the 7 gal was 16.2 brix which is 1.066
• Added 3 more gal of batch sparge which brought the temp up to about 180 F.  Stirred, vorlaufed, and then drained (vorlauf sample had a gravity of 13.8 brix which is 1.056).
• Collected ~11 gal of wort (my sight glass measurement lines are screwed up so I don't know the volume exactly).  Measured the gravity as 14 brix which is 1.057.
• Brought the wort to a boil - took 20 min.  The hot break overflowed a little at one point and then stayed right at the rim for an uncomfortably long time.

• Boiled down to 8 gal and added the 60 min hops
• Boiled down to 6.75 gal and added the 20 min hops and the irish moss
• Added the wort chiller and stopped the burner at a little over 6 gal
• Chilled down to 65 F - took 15 min
• Transferred to the fermentor on top of the previous yeast cake and swirled to mix in.  I let the wort fall a couple feet to aerate.
• Ended up with about 6 gal of wort
• Moved to the fermentation chamber set to 65 F.  Using a normal airlock to start but plan on switching to a blow off tube once fermentation gets under way.
• 5/26/15 - I ended up accidentally chilling the beer down to 35 F yesterday before I realized my mistake with the temperature controller.  The beer had warmed to the low 50s by this morning and was bubbling slowly.  It was 59 F by this afternoon and was bubbling strongly.  It's 66 F in the basement so I gave it some time with the fermentation chamber lid off to warm to the target temperature.
• 5/28/15 - Allowed the beer to rise up to 68 F.  It was still bubbling pretty vigorously this morning but was almost petered out by this evening.
• 6/19/15 - Transferred the beer into a glass carboy for aging.  Added 1 oz of oak cubes that I had boiled in water first.  Measured the gravity at 1.032 which I'm happy about.  The beer is a copper color.  It is smells of sweet malt and has a flavor balance a bit toward malt (although there is a decent hop presence mixed in as well).  It is quite sweet and it has a strong alcohol bite - I think the 5 months of aging is going to do this beer well.
• 11/4/15 - I will be bottling this batch in about a month.  Checked the gravity and was shocked to find that it's dropped all the way down to 1.006.  This is in a beer that had stopped at 1.032 in primary.  I've taken a peak at the beer at least every week over the last 5 months and there were no visual signs of fermentation.  I'm really astonished.  In spite of the low FG and much higher than expected alcohol it is still a really nice tasting beer.  It is very mellow and smooth.  There is a pleasant caramel malt flavor that is pretty prominent and some fruity ester character is evident.  There is also may be a slight astringency on the finish - probably from the oak.
• 12/5/15 - Bottled with 1 packet of re-hydrated champagne yeast and 3 oz of priming sugar.  Ended up with about 5 gal which got me 51 12 oz bottles.  I really noticed the oak a lot on this sample which seems very wine like.  I think it's going to be a nice beer to drink over the next several years.

• 12/26/15 - Tasting Notes (2015) - First of what will, hopefully, be a multiple year tasting experience with this beer.  It is a very wine like beer with this level of oaking.  I think that works well with the dry finish.  It also has a nice level of overall complexity between fruity yeast and a bit of caramel malt character.  It wasn't as rich or complex as the 2014 version but that may just come with age.  Only time will tell.
• 2/27/17 - Tasting Notes (2016) - I was sorry to find that this beer has become quite astringent as it's aged.  This is overwhelming the pleasant malt character of the beer at this point.  Will be interesting to see how this one does more age.
• 6/28/17 - I mixed this beer with about an ounce of Bourbon Whiskey as an experiment - it tasted wonderful this way.  The strong flavors of the beer are cut by the whiskey but they're strong enough to balance it out.  I'll be temped to drink all of them this way.
• 3/9/18 - Tasting Notes (2017) - Not a bad beer but it has a somewhat odd yeast ester character and is still a bit astringent.  This is still my least favorite of the English Barleywine I've brewed.
• 5/26/19 - Tasting Notes (2019):
• Aroma:  Fruity yeast ester - peach maybe or apricot.  Also pick up mandarin orange
• Appearance:  Copper colored and cloudy.  Poured with a lot of head (the bottle actually foamed over on me prior to pouring and made a bit of a mess).  The foam settled down to a thin ring within a minute or two.  Lots of sediment made it's way to the glass
• Flavor:  Caramel malt with some fruity yeast ester.  Alcohol comes through on the finish.  I don't get any hop bitterness
• Mouthfeel:  Medium-light bodied with a slight sweetness.  Has a pretty firm astringency that prickles the tongue
• Overall:  Some nice flavors but they are fairly mild.  Reasonably complex.  The astringency adds an interesting dimension.  Not an easy drinker but not a chore either.
• 5/23/20 - Tasting Notes (2020):
• Aroma:  Has a pungent fruit ester character - sort of odd.  Very musty smelling.  Maybe get a bit of caramel and bready malt
• Appearance:  Dark golden brown and clear.  Pours with a think layer of foam that quickly dissipates down to nothing
• Flavor:  Fruity flavor up front which fades into toasted bread, caramel, and maybe a bit of chocolate.  malt lingers through the finish.  The ester character is sort of like an overripe peach maybe.  Some smooth aged alcohol character comes through in the flavor
• Mouthfeel:  Medium bodied with a bit of sweetness.  Has a slight astringent bite
• Overall:  Boldly flavored beer.  I think the fruity character of the beer is a bit overwhelming and not particularly pleasant.  Has some other things going on but that they are fairly far in the background doesn't help the complexity
• 5/31/21 - Tasting Notes (2021):
• Aroma:  Fruity ester is strong - sort of overripe apple or maybe a cider.  Maybe get a bit of caramel a bit further in the background along with a bit of booze.  Maybe some honey as well.
• Appearance:  Dark gold in color and pretty clear.  Pours with a finger of head that quickly fades to a thin ring.  Has a continuous cascading of bubbles from the bottom of the glass
• Flavor:  Sweet bready malt with a fruity ester character - sort of apple like again.  Has a bit of bitter kick on the finish which is balanced by dark caramel flavors that linger along with that fruity ester
• Mouthfeel:  Medium bodied with a bit of sweetness.  Fairly smooth with some alcohol warming
• Overall:  Boldly flavored and very complex.  The finish is very nice.  Malt flavors are the star here but the ester has a fairly firm presence as well
• 5/28/22 - Tasting Notes (2022):
• Tasting Notes (38 of 50):
• Aroma (7 of 12):  Fruity ester along with a bit of booze most prominent.  Get a bit of bready malt in there as well along with some caramel.  Not picking up any hop.  Maybe get some oak as well.
• Appearance (2 of 3):  Pours with a 1 finger head that quickly fades to nothing.  Reddish brown in color and clear
• Flavor (16 of 20):  Some sweet malt up front - bready, toasty and caramel flavors.  This is followed by a hit of booze.  There is a fair amount of fruit in the middle.  The finish is fairly bitter.  This balances the sweet malt in the finish pretty nicely.  I get some herbal and grassy hop flavor in this one.
• Mouthfeel (5 of 5):  Fully bodied and a bit sweet.  Got a pretty smooth mouthfeel and leaves a bit of a warming sensation
• Overall (8 of 10):  This beer has bold aroma and flavor and a pretty nice level of complexity.  It is mostly malt focused but has a bit of fruitiness.  It seems very boozy which isn't a bad thing for a Barleywine.  I like the balance of it with some pretty good bitterness to go along with the fairly sweet beer.
• 5/28/23 - Tasting Notes (2023)
• Tasting Notes (34 of 50):
• Aroma (8 of 12):  Dark fruit aroma most prominent - has a wine like character and maybe some apple.  Musty character to it - some oxidation maybe.  A bit of caramel malt in there as well.  Smells fairly strong in terms of booze.  Also a bit like a candy sweetness character.  
• Appearance (3 of 3):  Dark gold and pretty clear.  Poured with a 1 finger head that quickly subsided into nothing.
• Flavor (14 of 20):  Fruity flavor up front along with a dark caramel and toasted bread flavor.  Get a bit of a hit of alcohol in the middle.  This is followed by a bit of a musty and aged kind of flavor that lingers into the finish.  The finish has a mild bitterness that balances a fairly sweet character.
• Mouthfeel (4 of 5):  Medium-full bodied and fairly sticky sweet.  There is a bit of a prickly character to the beer.  Has a warming effect.
• Overall (5 of 10):  A fairly boozy and reasonably complex beer.  It has a fairly pleasing compliment of malt, fruit, and aged flavors.  The flavors aren't particularly bold in this one
• 6/1/24 - Tasting Notes (2024):
• Tasting Notes (40 of 50):
• Aroma (9 of 12):  Sweet malty and caramel aromas  There is a honey-like character in there as well.  It has a fruit character and a bit of booze.  I think it's a really nice smell and pretty bold.
• Appearance (3 of 3):  Pours with a 1 finger head which lasts for a couple minutes before fading to a thin ring.  Red-gold in color and very clear
• Flavor (17 of 20):  Sweet malt and caramel up front.  Has a bit of chocolate flavor as well.  There is a light fruit flavor in the middle.  Has a good amount of bitterness in the finish which balances against the sweet malt character.  Taste a bit of booze as well.  The flavors are good and pretty bold.
• Mouthfeel (4 of 5):  It is medium bodied and has just a slight stickiness on the palate.  Drinks pretty smooth.  It has a very noticeable alcohol warming effect
• Overall (7 of 20):  This is a complex and very flavorable beer.  It has a nice set of malt flavors and a good amount of bitterness to balance it.  It is a nice sipping beer and seems like a strong beer from the heat although it hides the alcohol well in terms of flavor and aroma

Lessons Learned:

1. It turned out that it was absolutely necessary to use that third batch sparge.  The high gravity of the third (1.056) was very surprising.  I may not have had to collect all 3 gal of it though.  The refractometer was really nice to use for this.  Can't wait to fly sparge where I can just collect until I get down to 1.010 wort - it will be interesting to see what kind of volume this drives me to collect.
2. Picking up the kettle with 11 gal of wort really sucked.  I need to make the final push to finish my setup here.

Sour Blonde 1.3.1

It's been three months since brewing my previous sour blonde (1.2.1) so it's time to move it off the yeast cake and replace it with new beer.

I'll be keeping the same grain bill for this this round which is 2/3 Pilsner and 1/3 Flaked Wheat and shooting for an OG of 1.055.  I haven't managed to hit that mark so far but I'm okay with that.

I will be trying a new mash schedule on this batch to, hopefully, better approximate the wort produced in a turbid mash.  This will be a 15 min mash at 160 F following by a mash out with boiling water to halt conversion.  Hopefully this will leave me with a really starchy wort which will leave a lot of food for the brett over the long aging period.  The previous two beers are too young to give me that much insight into the impacts of these various process choices so I'm just going to try a variety of techniques and see what produces the best beer down the road.

It's getting pretty warm here so I'm going to skip the attempt to collect wild microbes.  I'm also going to sparge with less water this time - I don't think I am getting that much value from the long boil for this beer.

This will be my first beer with a new false bottom cooler mash tun.  This mash tun will be part of a RIMS/fly sparge system which I'm getting pretty close to finishing.  I'm excited to try out the false bottom.  Hoping it works well for me.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 9 lbs Pilsner Malt
• 4 lbs 8 oz Flaked Wheat
• 5 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 0.5 Kent Golding (Pellet, 6.3% AA) at 60 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend (Third Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6.25 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 161 F for 15 min (Target 160 F for 15 min)
• Boil:
• 60 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temp:
• Ambient Basement Temps (62 F to 75 F)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 months
• Secondary Duration:
• TBD (15 to 33 months)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.032 (Target 1.055)
• Efficiency:
• 43% (Target 68%)
• FG:
• TBD (Target 1.006)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD (Target 89%)
• ABV:
• TBD (Target 4.43%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5/10/15 - Brew day - 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM- Including setup and cleanup
• Heated entire 10 gal of water up to boiling - Took 40 min
• Added CaCl to the mash tun
• Once the water got up to strike water temp of 180 F transferred 22 qt to the mash tun
• Let the mash tun settle for 10 min - ended up at 160 F.  I drained the water back into the kettle and heated up to 195 F and then transferred again.  Settled at 180 F this time.  I stirred until it got to 175 F
• Added the grain and stirred to eliminate dough balls
• After 5 min the temp was at 161 F
• After 15 min added the remaining 4.5 gal of boiling water to the mash - brought temp up to 185 F
• Stirred and drained mash tun without a vorlauf - drained at full speed

• Collected 8 gal of wort
• Brought to a boil - took 15 min
• Added the hops after the hot break cleared
• Added the irish moss at 6.5 gal
• Stopped the boil at 6.25 gal to account for expansion of the hot liquid
• Added the chiller to sanitize at flameout
• Chilled which took 12 min
• Transferred onto the yeast cake.  Allowed the break material to transfer but left most of the hops.  Ended up filling the fermentor very close to the top.  I could be in trouble if this is a vigorous fermentation.
• Collected 6.25 gal
• Moved down to the basement to ferment
• 5/16/15 - The beer started bubbling the day after and kept going for a couple days.  I ended up having to pull the airlock out of the fermentor once as foam was being pushed into it a bit.  It wasn't a very vigorous fermentation fortunately and now I'm in the clear hopefully.
• 8/8/15 - Transferred this beer to a glass carboy for long term aging and to reuse the cake for Sour Blonde 1.4.1.  I took more of the yeast cake on the transfer than I usually do to try to give Brett a bit more dead yeast to chew on.  No pellicle.  Measured the gravity as 1.002.  It's interesting that it dropped so much lower than the previous two - I wonder if this is due to the heat or to some change in the yeast cake.  Only time will tell.   The beer had a very funky smell and a bready and fruity flavor.  No real sourness has developed so far with this one.  I'm going to try aging this one with a vented silicone bung rather than the three piece airlock I have been using with my other sours.

• 10/10/15 - The beer quickly formed a fairly substantial pellicle which is still hanging out.  I'm thinking this is due to my use of the silicone bung rather than an airlock.  I will try this beer after 3 months to see if there is any corresponding flavor impact associated with it as well.

• 10/20/17 - Status Report:
• Pronounced sulfur aroma both in fermenter and glass.  Also get overripe fruit.  Get a bit of spicy yeast as well as some malt
• Light gold and very clear
• Light tartness along with a bit of fruit - citrus maybe.  Also get a bit of earthy funk.  Bready malt comes through on the finish
• Nice range of flavors give the beer reasonable complexity.  Fairly mild taste
• 12/2/17 - Topped off with 0.5 gal of lacto soured 1.020 beer.  I will use this beer for blending - I'm hoping that this extra beer increases the tartness and complexity somewhat to increase its interest as a blending component.
• 5/25/18 - Status Report:
• Funky/musty brett character dominates the aroma. Has a bit of cider character and some sulfur smell as well.
• Straw yellow and a bit murky.
• A bit of a musty flavor initially and finishes with a slight tartness. Get sort of a mineral flavor as well.
• Light bodied and pretty dry. Smooth drinking
• Very mild in flavor and not very complex
• 6/3/18 -  Used 1 gal of this beer in a Cherry Sour Blonde blend
• 10/13/18 - Added a 1 oz oak stick that had aged in Chardonnay and then my Plain Sour blond blend.
• 8/24/19 - Status Report:
• Aroma:  Light, cheesy, funk and a bit of overripe fruit.  Also some mineral
• Appearance:  Straw colored and very clear
• Flavor:  Only the faintest sourness has developed.  Light malt flavor with a bit of funk.  It has a slight bitterness.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and pretty dry.  Smooth drinking
• Overall:  Light flavors with little complexity

Lessons Learned:

1. This mashing plan didn't work out so well for me.  I must not have gotten the unconverted starches into suspension.  Doing the single batch probably was a major contributor to this.  I think the RIMS setup could have made this a bit easier as I could raise the mash temp up to a good mashout temperature using this which could have helped get the starches into suspension due to the higher heat.
2. The mash tun absorbed a lot more heat than expected due to having a large number of glass marbles filling the dead space under the false bottom.  My projected heat loss was way off.  The RIMS setup would have made this much easier too as I could just cycle it until the temperature of everything evens out.

Hop Crop 2015

Apparently Pennsylvania is a good place to grow hops.  It's pretty far north so you get good sunshine, there is quite a bit of rain, and it doesn't get that hot.

A friend of mine worked with a home brew shop to get some hop rhizomes of a few varieties and I offered to try my hands with one of them.  I will be trying to grow Golding hops.

I decided to go with a raised bed rather than planting in the ground as I didn't really have any good place to put them other than the middle of the lawn.  A raised bed just seemed like an easier way to ensure that the hops wouldn't get disturbed.  I will be using a partially dead tree to support a string for the hops to grow up.

We have a lot deer and squirrel around here so I may end up having my hops eaten.  Not sure how fond they will be of them.  At this point I've decided to just let nature take it's course so I haven't put up any sort of fence.

Hops are a plant that will come back every year.  I've read that it will take a few years for the plants to get fully established.  This first year likely wont produce a big crop.

I've never been good with plants - they are pretty much non-entities to me and I forget to water them.  I'm pretty enthused about these hops though so hopefully I'll be able to keep them alive and healthy.

Hop Growing Log:

• 4/19/15 - Planting day
• Built a 4x8x1 ft planter box and found a location that gets ~8 hrs of good sun a day (side yard)
• Added 10 2 cu ft bags of Miracle-gro garden soil and 4 50 lb bags of cow manure
• Mixed up the soil and manure and raked it evenly through the bed (mostly filled it)

• Planted two Golding hop rhizomes about 3 feet apart about 1 in deep in the bed.  One of them had the start of a plant coming out and the other had some roots.  I buried them both horizontally

• Watered the entire bed with 2.5 gal of water.  This seemed to only get the surface wet - we are going to get rain tomorrow so I didn't want to over do it.
• Covered the ground with ~1 cu ft of shredded wood mulch
• Put in a couple stakes with rings near the plants to secure the climbing rope to (will take care of the rope after they've grown a bit)
• 4/20/15 - Had quite a bit of rain today.  The planter box is pretty wet but not soaked.  I think the plants will be okay
• 4/28/15 - The top inch or so of soil was pretty dry so I watered with 2.5 gal
• 4/29/15 - A small (less than 1 in) shoot has sprouted on one of the plants.  No sign of anything on the other.
• 5/1/15 - The other hop plant has had a leafless shoot break the surface.
• 5/2/15 - Watered with 2 gal
• 5/3/15 - The first plant to sprout now has a second sprout coming out

5/5/15 - Watered with 2 gal
5/16/15 - I've been watering a couple times per week with about 1.5 gal each time.  The main shoot on one and the only shoot on the other have grown quite a bit in the last couple weeks:

• 5/17/15 - Put up a fence posts and ran twine down to the hops.  I wrapped top bit of hops around the hops clockwise to train them to climb.
• 5/26/15 - Hop plants are making their way up the string:

• 6/10/15 - The hops have made their way to the top of the string.  I added another run from the top of the post to to a tree ~20 feet away.  Many of the leave have been eaten by something.  I have found earwigs climbing on the plants so that might have been part of it.  The plants don't seem to be slowed by this too much.
• 6/13/15 - The hops have moved on to the next string.

6/28/15 - The hops are making their way down the string.  They have started to grow side arms.  I trimmed off some of them to try to get the main vine to grow last week but now I'm thinking of just letting nature take it's course.

• 7/12/15 - The two main vines haven't grown a whole lot in the last couple weeks but they have both thrown out quite a few side arms.  I put in a second post and some more climbing lines for the arms.  I've read that this extra growth can reduce the hop production but it sounds like in the first year you need to give them as many leaves as possible to help build up a good root bed for the winter.  My friend (growing Cascade hops) has hop 10 feet tall at this point.  Mine are about 8 feet each.

• 7/26/15 - The hops have been growing pretty vigorously in the last couple weeks but it's all in the side arms.  The two main vines haven't grown much at all.  One of them has started to sprout some flowers on a number of the side arms.  I was starting to wonder if I was going to get any hops this year - it's looking like I'll get some but probably not a lot.

8/9/15 - The middle hop vine has overtaken the two main vines.  Quite a few new buds have formed along this vine.  Some of the first buds have started to form into cones.  All the buds are coming from one of the plants - the other still has none.  I had trimmed most of the lower branches off the one that is growing the buds so maybe that is a contributor to the behavior.  I've got some leaves that are starting to go yellow and brown on me on the main vine but there is some new growth still and a majority of the plant is looking healthy.

• 8/16/15 - The earth in the planter box has settled down quite a bit so I added 150 lbs of composted cow manure in about a 2 inch layer to the box.  This should also give the plant a bit more to eat as it finishes the growing season.
• 9/7/15 - Some of the leaves have started to wilt and fall off.  The hops are probably ready to pick but there are so few of them that I'm thinking it's not worth harvesting this year - I'd probably get about a dozen hops which I'm sure would be much less than 1/4 an oz.

• 10/11/15 - Autumn has arrived and my hops have just about had if for the year.  Many of the leaves have fallen off and the remainder are fading to brown.  It's getting down to the 40s at night now and should be in the 30s later this week.  Getting close to the time where I'll need to trim these down and get them ready for the winter.

• 10/25/15 - We have had a couple freezing nights and the hops have had it.  I have cut them down and added them to my compost pile.  I cut the stems down to about an inch above the soil line.  I then covered the entire bed with 3-4 inches of shredded leaf and grass clipping mulch.  This will hopefully insulate and offer some protection for the plant over the winter (I understand that you want the bed to stay cold over the winter and that the leaves help ensure that).  There were quite a few little buds poking out of the bottom of the stems waiting to form new hop plants next year.

• 1/24/16 - Had a pretty amazing snowstorm blow through and drop ~2 ft of snow on us last night.  This is all I could see of the hop bed from the driveway.  Hope they're okay in there.

• 4/20/16 - 2016 Hop Crop has started to make its appearance

Lessons Learned:

1. I have three fence posts, four lower strings, and three upper strings tied to a tree for the hops to grow up.  Next year I am going to use six posts with one string each so that each hop mound can grow up three strings.
2. The plants grow nicely up the string from the ground to the fence post but were not naturally winding up the original two strings I put up.  I ended up having to wind it every few days to keep the vine on the line.  The third string to the tree seems to be at an elevation where the plant will eventually wind around without assistance but it still takes a few days of growth where it's hanging off the line for that to happen.  I could have tied the strings up much higher in the tree to get an even steeper climb.  I'll plan on doing that next year.
3. I had quite a Japanese beetle issue with these plants.  I may have to try this product for next year.
4. Local mammal populations (deer, squirrel, raccoon, and woodchuck) did not eat my hops which is good news.

Ordinary Bitter

It has been a bit over a year since I brewed my first (and only) English Bitter.  It had a really nice balance of malt and hops and was very pleasant to drink.  For this English Bitter I'll be opting for a lower octane version - an ordinary bitter.  It will be nice to have a 3% ABV beer around for week nights.  I chose this recipe from homebrew talk (I also brewed this guy's English Mild and Saison which both turned out well).

The recipe is actually very similar to the last English bitter - same amount of crystal malt and very similar hop schedule.  The only major differences with this one is that is has less grain and that it includes 1 pound of victory malt (swapped for toasted Maris Otter) to get a bit of biscuit flavor.

I will be using Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast which is one I haven't tried yet.  I've been working my way through quite a few of these English yeasts of late.  It's getting a bit difficult to keep them all straight at this point - may need to build myself a little yeast chart to help with that.  I plan on using this yeast cake for an English Barleywine in a few weeks - this beer will serve as a good starter.

This would be a good beer to scale up to 10 gal due to it's small grain bill and low alcohol.  Due to the fact that I'm planning on re-using this yeast cake I've decided to keep this in one fermentor.  Next time I'll have to consider a larger batch.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 6 lbs 5 oz Maris Otter
• 1 lb Victory
• 8 oz Crystal 20 L
• 4 oz Crystal 120 L
• 3 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Kent Golding (Pellet, 6.3% AA) at First Wort
• 0.5 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 4.2% AA) at First Wort
• 0.5 oz Kent Golding (Pellet, 6.3% AA) at 5 min
• 0.5 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 4.2% AA) at 5 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 152 F (Target 151 F for 60 min)
• Boil:
• 90 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (62 to 64 F)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.036 (Target 1.035)
• Efficiency:
• 70% (Target 68%)
• FG:
• 1.010 (Target 1.011)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 72% (Target 68%)
• ABV:
• 3.21% (Target 3.15%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5/1/15 - Prepared a 1.5 liter yeast starter with 7.5 oz of DME and 1/8th tsp of yeast starter.  Setup the starter on a stir plate to propagate

• 5/3/15 - Brew day - 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM including setup and cleanup
• Brought 5 gal of strike water to 175 F - took 15 min
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the boil kettle
• Added 12 qt of strike water to the mash tun and let settle for 10 min - ended up at 165 F
• Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate dough balls
• After 10 min the mash was at 153 to 154 F
• Stirred after 30 min - mash was at 152 F
• Brought remaining 7 gal of sparge water up to 195 F - took 25 min
• After 60 min the mash was at 151 F
• Added 3.5 gal of mash out water, stirred, vorlaufed, and drained (slow at first and then full speed) - Mash out water raised temp to 173 F
• Added hops to the mash out

• Added 3.5 gal of batch sparge, stirred, vorlaufed, and drained (slow at first and then full speed) - this brought the mash up to 185 F
• Collected 9 gals
• Brought to a boil - took 12 min
• Once the beer had boiled down to 6.5 gal I added the Irish moss
• At 6.25 gal I added the 5 min hops
• Added the wort chiller at flameout to sanitize
• Chilled down to 65 F in 10 min

• Transferred to fermentor (Dropped a couple feet to aerate)
• Collected 6 gal of wort
• Pitched the yeast starter and left at ambient basement temps to ferment.  Setup the fermentor with an airlock - I don't anticipate a heavy fermentation for this small beer
• 5/4/15 - The beer was bubbling vigorously by the next morning
• 5/22/15 - Moved the beer to a 35 F fermentation chamber to cold crash
• 5/23/15 - Added gelatin for fining
• 5/24/15 - Bottled today.  Collected 6 gal which got me 60 12 oz bottles.  Measured the gravity as 1.010.  The beer has a very pretty gold color.  At this point the balance is a bit more towards the hops (which will probably settle down a bit over the next few weeks) but there is also a nice bit of malt flavor there as well - toasty/biscuity flavor.  I think I'm going to be happy with this one.
• 7/24/15 - Tasting - A nicely balanced and easy drinking beer at 3.2%.  I can drink several of these in a sitting without any ill effects which is very nice.
• 4/22/16 - Drank my last bottle of this beer today.  Still tasted very nice.  Had a good level of bitterness and was still nicely balanced.  It may be time to brew up another one of these as a starter for my next Barleywine.

Lessons Learned:

1. Getting very close to having RIMS setup complete.  I plan on fly sparging and using a refractometer to measure the gravity as I collect worth.  This same tool would be very handy for the batch sparge.
2. My sight glass has become almost unusable as the rubber o-rings I used to mark the tube have either slipped or fallen off.  The tube itself is also badly warped from being overheated in my previous burner setup.  I need to replace the glass and use a sharpie to mark it.