Cascade Hops: 2 Weeks

I'm happy to report that one of the two Cascade rhizomes I planted two weeks ago has sprouted! After the first week, the sprouts poked up through the soil, and now are growing quickly. From what I have read, it is advisable to let these first shoots grow a bit, then prune them back and then let the next shoots mature and they will be more healthly and productive.

The other hasn't hasn't started yet, so perhaps I either planted it upside-down, or it is sick.

It's going to be hard to wait for them to produce. Especially since hops are getting hard to find at decent prices. I found some Cascade Leaf Hops available here for a good price for 3oz. I haven't ordered yet, since I still have some on hand from previous batches.

Cascade Hop Rhizomes

I received my cascade hop rhizomes from Northern Brewer this week!! I'm a little worried because they had a very funky smell. Almost like a wine or vinegar type smell. And there was a small amount of white mildew/fungus on the rhizomes. Plus there were some critters too - some sort of grub or maggot. I killed what I could see, but I'm sure I didn't get everything. Hopefully the rhizomes will still be good. Who knows how long they were in storage and if they are still healthy.

I planted yesterday in some terracotta pots. While at Laguna Hills nursery here in Foothill Ranch, I got lucky and ran into a real helpful gardener named Brody who also happens to grow his own hops. He said his Cascades are already about 20 feet this season. He recommended a mix they have of peat moss, pumice, sand and some other organic compounds. It should make for a nice acidic soil for the hops.

My plan is to grow the bines up 8 feet and then go horizontal along my patio cover and back awning. That added with my Cabernet Sauvingon grapes already growing up one side of the patio cover should make for some very nice coverage. I'll post some pictures when/if the hops actually start growing.

California Beer Tax

The geniuses in our state government are at it again, trying to steal individual and corporate wealth to put toward social welfare programs. State Assemblyman Jim Beall is proposing a new beer tax that would add $1.80 to a six-pack of beer. Another way to look at it is that it would raise the tax on a barrel of beer from $6.40 to $89!!! And though the tax would be levied against the breweries (evil, evil corporations that like profit), of course that cost would be passed on to consumers. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8888028?source=rss


Go ahead. Tax it. More incentive for me to brew my own. Then the state gets even less tax from me than before their tax. It's called the Laffer Curve in Econ 101. But then again very few of our politicians understand economics in the first place....

Better Bottle Update

I transferred out my Belgian Strong Golden last week. For my secondary I was using the 6 Gallon Better Bottle with the spigot at the bottom for the first time. I was excited to use this because it has a nice racking arm attached to it to minimize sediment getting pulled out with the beer, and I can now do away with siphoning. However, I'm not too crazy about the flow rate of the spigot. Very very slow. So slow that the beer doesn't completely fill the outflow tubing, so there is constant air in the tube as you empty the carboy. I am hoping this doesn't completely oxidize the beer. Since this strong golden won't be ready for a few months I can't really tell what the outcome of this batch will be. I do have a kolsch in it right now, which should be bottled in a week.

Pinkberry

Now this has nothing at all to do with beer or brewing, but I'll blog about it anyway. Last night after the wife and I went out to a movie (saw "Juno" which was cute, though not Oscar worthy I think), we stopped by the new Pinkberry yogurt place at Irvine Spectrum. In case you haven't heard of Pinkberry, they are the newest craze in luxury ice cream/yogurt. The yogurt is very tart and sour, and besides the greentea/coffee flavor there is only the original flavor. Not really vanilla, but similar. Maybe a cross between a sour vanilla and buttermilk. Anyway, the draw to this place is you get this sour yogurt and top it with all kinds of good fresh fruits or cereals like Cap'n crunch. Also, the stores are ultra modern and fresh looking. You walk in and there's techno music playing, everyone looks young and hip. I was instantly happy and felt immensely cooler just standing there. I got a yogurt topped with fresh blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Delicious and refreshing. I'm not one to get all crazy about the newest hype or trend - but I think they really nailed with this place. Great product, great shop that makes you feel good just being there. I'll definitely go back.

Brettanomyces

Today thanks to a tip from Rob over at Democracy's Drink I added a vial of Brettanomyces to my secondary fermentation for that blonde ale that I recently screwed up by adding way too much extract. I used a vial of White Labs' Brettanomyces Bruxellensis WLP650. My hope is that this wild belgian yeast will continue to ferment where the California Ale yeast left off. Oh and I also added some cascade leaf hops to dry hop in secondary as well.

Hopefully between the Brettanomyces ,the dry hopping, and some long aging I should come out with something close to a Golden Strong Ale? Or at least something drinkable. Time will tell.....

HONEY... I Blew it!!!

Last week I started a new beer. I wanted to do a Honey Blonde Ale to get ready for springtime, and maybe to enter into the 2008 Sam Adams Longshot contest along with one of my stouts and maybe a California common. Here's the ingredients I used for my recipe....

60 min 4.00 lb Pilsner Liquid Extract (3.5 SRM) Extract
60 min 1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (60 min) Hops
30 min 3.00 lb White Sage Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 30.00 %
15 min 0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (15 min) Hops
10 min 0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc

2 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast-Ale


Here's the problem: Between working on tiling the kitchen backsplash and brewing beer I got distracted and added 6lbs Pilsner extract rather than 4lbs. My OG reading was off the charts at 1.12!!! Between the extra pilsner and the honey I must have really jacked up the fermentables.

Original recipe should have had gravity of 1.055, and then even with the extra 2 lbs it should have been 1.069. But I got 1.12???? The only reason I can think this happened is the White Sage Honey must have been very very low in water content.

At this point after finding out that my OG is way too high, I'm scared. Did I just ruin the beer? I don't think there's any way the yeast will be able to ferment all that sugar, even though this White Labs California Ale Yeast has a high attenuation at up to 80%. I did prepare a yeast starter as usual, but just be safe I got another vial of yeast and added that as well. Hopefully all that yeast will be able to survive the high alcohol that will be produced. This beer no longer fits the category of a honey blonde. It almost fits the style guide for a Belgian Strong Golden. So that's what I'm going to call it.

It has now been in primary fermentation for 11 days. It happily bubbled away for the first weeks with a nice krausen, then has leveled off. Still bubbling through airlock but not as rapid. I checked specific gravity yesterday and it is reading 1.020. I plan to rack to secondary today and let it sit for a month or so before bottling and aging.

The beer so far is very very dry, and not a huge malt character. I'm afraid it is going to be straight rubbing alcohol by the time it is done. My thought is maybe I'll dry-hop in secondary with some cascade and hopefully that will smooth out the alcohol profile a bit. Unfortunately I'll probably have to age for months like a Belgian ale, and now it won't be ready in time for the Sam Adams contest.

Anyone who reads this and has any suggestions on how I can salvage this batch, I'd appreciate any comments.

Rhizomes!!!!

I just ordered some Cascade Rhizomes. In light of the worldwide hops shortage I'm going to take a shot growing some myself. I don't have a ton of space in the backyard, but hopefully I can get a couple vines going. More of an experiment more than anything. I don't expect to grow enough for all my brewing, but if I can make one or two batches with my own fresh hops, that will be fulfilling. Once I get them growing I'll post some photos.

I also ordered one of those 6 gallon plastic "Better Bottles" to add to my fermentation equipment. Now I can have a couple different brews going at a time. It is ported at the bottom so I can do away with cumbersome siphoning.

Coming up on tap soon is going to be a honey-blonde ale. I'm using pilsner extract with some honey malt specialty grains, and a whopping 3lbs of white sage honey!!! Will be done by springtime and will be a good lawnmowing beer. (OK, it takes me about 5 minutes to mow my tiny lawn, but that's enough to earn a beer isn't it?)

There's no free lunch....

Good Morning, and here is my environmental rant for the day. Don't usually like to discuss things like this in this blog, but this is directly related to beer. Today I received an email from Northern Brewer discussing how the supply of hops will not meet worldwide demand for the next two years. This is on top of what we have all seen with rising beer prices this year.

Now what the Northern Brewer article didn't mention, is why there is a shortage of hops? And why have beer prices overall increased as well? Of course rising petroleum costs are raising prices of everything we buy. But that's not it by itself. One of the main reasons for hops shortage is the energy trend towards biofuels like ethanol. At first glance you might not see the correlation, but it's there.

Now I'm all for trying to find new cleaner resources of energy - solar, wind, nuclear, being chief among the options. But people need to understand there is no free lunch when it comes to energy or anything else. No magic bullet. For example, it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you get from burning it. True, the end product out of your tailpipe is cleaner, but some production plant had to burn coal or natural gas in order to create the hydrogen in the first place, then had to transport the hydrogen to it's final point of use. All that is wasteful.

But now back to biofuels and beer. Farmers have found that with this new trend, it is more profitable to switch out their traditional crops and start growing corn to be used for ethanol production. So, farmers that used to grow wheat, barley, and HOPS are now growing corn instead. Thus here we have our inequity in supply and demand. Beer demand (especially for craft brews) is growing worldwide while supply of ingredients for beer are not. Another unintended consequence of the growth of ethanol is food shortages in third-world countries. Worldwide stocks of corn are being directed toward fuel production rather than food. This is also causing even more rapid deforestation to plant crops like corn and soy to be used for biofuel. Mexico has seen prices of tortillas rise to the point of regular people having to pay the equivalent of a day's pay just for tortillas which are the main staple. We are now starting to see countries like Taiwan and China withhold exports of rice just to be able to feed their own people.

So you see, there is no free lunch as my professor in Econ 101 told us. It sounds great to use ethanol to save the world by cleaning the air. But what good is that if we can't afford to eat our tortillas and drink our beer?!!

Like I said, I'm all for trying to do things better, and ethanol technology was an important first step in the goal towards cleaner energy. But what are some possible solutions that reduce the negative externalities (ECON 101 plug here) and still allow us cleaner air, cheaper beer and tortillas? I'm not a scientist, but here are some ideas:

1. Grow and brew your own: Why not grow your own hops? Yes, they do take up alot of space, but anyone with a pole in the backyard or the ability to run a wire horiziontal can grow some hops. Grow organic as much as possible. And by brewing your own you are helping buy reusing bottles and minimizing transportation costs associated with production.

2. Buy Local: If you can't grow it yourself, try to buy not just your beer ingredients, but as much of what you consume as close to home as possible. This helps in a few areas. The farther the product had to travel to get to your plate or glass, the more fuel was consumed to get it there. It also takes cost out of the distribution chain. Buying locally supports your local economy.

3. Different production methods/ingrediants for biofuels: Producers need to look at other sources to make biofuels. Corn production requires much water and is not as efficient as other possibilities. What about about other options such as bamboo and hemp? Renewable sources that are more efficient to grow than corn. This would take pressure of world corn stocks. Of course new supply pressures would be put on other products that require hemp and bamboo, but like I said there is no free lunch.

Anyway, just some ideas floating around in my head.....

Next on Tap.....

Alright, back to some real beer after that horrible lemon hefeweizen. This weekend I brewed a "Big Honkin' Stout". I used an extract kit from Northern Brewer. It's going to be very hard to wait for this one - should be done in about two months just in time for christmas. And no matter how hard I try to do everything perfect during brewing, something always goes wrong. This time my siphon came loose while transferring into my primary, and I spilled wort all over the kitchen floor. Oh well, not too much was wasted and luckily we need to refinish the floor anyway.

After I move the Stout out of the primary, I'm going to try a California Common. I'm modifying my Bronwish Ale recipe a bit. Mainly using light DME instead of dark, and using California Lager yeast instead of the Irish Ale yeast. For those of you who haven't heard of California Common style of beer, think of Anchor Steam. Anchor trademarked the name "Steam" for their beer, but it basically is the style that the pioneers and 49er's made during the California gold rush. Since refrigeration and cooling was difficult back then in the hot California weather, brewers had to use a lager yeast but brew like it was an ale. The result was steam style beer. I'll post my recipe later when I start brewing this one.