A Harvest 2016 Update from @maltesebrewing @hawksbillhops

Last year we worked with five brewers who used our hops in their beers.  One of them was Maltese Brewing Company, in Fredericksburg - I visited them in the spring, and their web page is www.maltesebrewing.com.

If you do happen to click through to the web site, check out the "about" page, which tells their story.  Maltese was founded by a couple of firefighters who enjoyed homebrewing and eventually decided to make the jump to professional.  Their name refers to the firefighters' Maltese Cross, the symbol of the profession.

While our yields were low this year, we did send a few samples around to a few of our customers, including Maltese - we sent a full pound to them. My hope for the sample was that they would check it out, and let me know what they thought - and then still have enough left to use in a brew.

I use a rule of thumb that a pound is enough for a barrel of beer - and knowing the batch size with this brewery it was definitely feasible that they could use the product in a batch, maybe for an aroma addition, or for dry hopping.    

It wasn't long before I saw a tag on Facebook, however, with a photo attached.  They'd used the hops in an ale they were brewing - the caption said, "Maxing out the mash tun today with a bit of fresh Hawksbill Cascade.  Cheers!"

That's why we grow them - and that's why we keep trying to grow them better every year.  And it seems like I'm overdue for a visit to Maltese Brewing!

Hops Results - 2016 - @hawksbillhops

As I've mentioned a couple of times on the blog, we decided to taper the focus on the hop yards off just a bit this year while we are simultaneously working to develop the brewery in Luray.  What I had hoped this would do for us was to allow us to do an experiment or two on how we processed the hops, so that we could get some feedback on our quality processes.  So with picking and drying complete, we sent a few samples down to Ken Hurley at the Virginia Tech Hops Lab to get some key measurements.

Their page, which I linked above, includes a list of the services they offer, along with a lot of helpful information about growing the crop in Virginia.  As a management consultant with a minor specialty in operations management, I know the value of statistics, so I make it a duty to provide a sample of my Cascades every year, as we did this year.  We're also working with other growers in the Luray area to get samples from them in for testing, since we also hope to source from them once the brewery is open.

Ken will probably present his findings on the year's crop at the growers' conference next spring, which will be held in Asheville this year.  That's something to look forward to - and one of the results I expect to see from the growing body of data is some ground truth on "terroir," or how Virginia hops differ from those grown elsewhere.  With a year or two of data already in the books, he's provided some good insight already!  

Hawksbill Hop Yards sent two Cascade samples down for testing this year, and we also sent a sample from Bill Fisher's ten plant yard on Main Street.  If I'm able to gather samples from two other Page County growers, I will send those down as well - not to mention if we do go back out and try to harvest our last two rows of Cascade, I'll send a sample from that lot - and I will post a follow-up to this.

In any case, the results we received are highlighted in the table below.  I've added a row to compare them to the "US Cascade" factors identified in the Hieronymous book, For the Love of Hops.

Looking at these statistics, there are a couple of observations to make:

1. At least in the case of Hawksbill Hop Yards, we did not dry our hops long enough in the HOP-N-ATOR last year.  The consensus is they should get to 8-10% moisture for maximum storage life - and we nailed it with all three of these samples!
2. For Alphas, the source of the bittering effect that hops provide, two of our samples fall within the range.  One of the samples is slightly higher, but close - last year the sample from this row was in the 8% range, possibly an indication of a terroir effect.
3. For Betas, again we are in the range on two samples, and just below on a third.  Betas also contribute a bittering effect, but one that does not occur during brewing - it is a longer-term breakdown that occurs during storage.
4. Cohumulone is one of the Alphas, and the percentage metric listed shows the percentage of total Alpha contributed by the Cohumulone.  I've heard discussions that this one is particularly bitter, and several of the proprietary varieties were developed to reduce this component; our hops fall below what's typical for the US variety.

So we're on our way to sound crop science in the Virginia hops industry.  It goes without saying that I'm excited anytime I hear that our hops have made it into a brew - whether that is a home brew or a commercial product.  I'm especially proud of the relationships we have with some Virginia brewers, and I hope we are able to build on that foundation once our yields are mature and stable, which should happen in year three - the 2017 harvest!

Drying and Packing @hawksbillhops

A few Cascade cones from Lot 2.

Since David and the crew had worked a couple of days last week to get our crop in, my job was left to do: remove the dried hops from our oast - the HOP-N-ATOR 4000 - and package them for storage.  (The link in this sentence leads to a 2015 harvest post where we designed and built the oast.)


The team had harvested three rows of our Cascades, about 180 plants in all.  We still have two rows to go, and we'll harvest them in a week or so.  We may be pushing it for timing on these last 120 hills, but it is what it is, our schedules are not cooperating with the later harvest his year.

Here's about half of Lot 1, just out of the HOP-N-ATOR 4000.

Based on feedback we had received from Virginia Tech last year, we made a few changes to our process.  I've already posted about the dry mass test we did to ensure we picked at optimal times.  Next, we decided we would dry the hops a bit longer this year in a quest for optimal moisture - extending their time in the oast from 24 hours to 48 hours.


All I have to go on for now is memory, but it did seem to me that the hops are dryer this year than last.  The crew got a few more leaves and stems mixed in as well, but I kept an eye out for these and cleaned as many as I could as I went.

The hops are weighed and packed into 8 oz. bags.

Once the hops come out of the HOP-N-ATOR 4000, I weigh them into 8 ounce packs using standard vacuum bags that we buy in bulk.  We considered getting better bags and even flushing them with nitrogen to remove the oxygen prior to filling them with hops, but we'll wait a bit before investing in that upgrade.


This is probably the most time consuming part of the harvest using the process we have now.  We have some ideas for upgrades, but it is likely a couple of years before we are able to do them.

Lot 2 - finished product, about 14 pounds of Cascade.

Each of the 8 oz. bags are then vacuum-sealed using one of the very basic machines you can get at Wal-Mart or elsewhere.  Because of the bulkiness of the cones once they are dried, I will assist the machine to get all the air out by pressing down on the bags.  This year they are all flat, more or less 12x16 packages, which should be easy to store.


Last year they were somewhat an odd shape due to the pleated bags we were using.  This added a little complexity to the vacuum process as well, so it took a frustratingly long time.  This year I completed both lots in about 4 hours total, while it took three times that long last year.


At the end of the day, we had a total of around 28 pounds of dried Cascade.  Most of them are in 8 oz bags, but I did make a total of 10 4 oz. bags for home brewers.  I have a plan to distribute some of the crop this year to our buyers from last year, but we're saving the bulk of it to use in Hawksbill Brewing Company recipes.


I think I've written about this already, but just in case, a final thought for today.  We grow Cascade, Columbus, Chinook, Goldings, and Fuggles.  This year the Goldings and Fuggles were a disappointment; we didn't even string the Goldings, so we need to think about the way ahead for these two varieties.

The Chinook and Columbus were pretty spotty for us as well - we have 180 and 120 plants of these two varieties.  Although we didn't harvest them, because we wanted to leave the leaf cover up in the sun for a few extra weeks to build plant strength, my guess is less than 20 percent of the bines made it up their strings.

All this leads to thinking about next year.  We may end up plowing under a couple of the underperformers and replacing them with Cascade.  It does really well in our yard and throughout Virginia.  Maybe we just face the music and make a hard decision.

More to follow!

The Harvest Begins @hawksbillhops

To reach the tops of the bines, which ranges from 9 to 16
feet in our yard, we use this cage mounted on the
fork lift apparatus on David's tractor.

David had planned for the harvest to begin this week.  There is a lot going on in Luray over the next few months, and some of the produce crops are ready for harvest too, so we were pulling the trigger if we were close to optimal dry mass.  It was good luck that the results of our second test showed that the hops were in the zone - 25% dry mass, so the plants were ready!


To begin the picking, David and a couple of the guys head out into the hop yard with the tractor and our lift.  The lift is made from a repurposed stock tank - we took out the plastic liner and left the metal container cage.  This is mounted to a pallet so that it can be lifted by the tractor.


A harvest crew member goes up in this bucket and cuts away the bines from the trellis.  From there, we have someone stationed on the ground to collect them on a trailer.  Then they are pulled over to the pole barn for picking by the ShenPaCo team.

Here's 78 pounds of wet hops, fresh from the 2016 harvest!

Hops picking is a focused, but fun, activity.  Last year we organized an event around it, and we will likely do that again in the future, but we couldn't make that work this year with everything that is going on in town.


At the end of the day, David told me they'd picked two rows of hops, and we had yielded 78 pounds.  The remaining three rows appear to have more hops than this on them, so we'll see how we do at the end of it all.


The first load went into the oast for drying on Tuesday, and should have been ready to pack on Thursday - I don't have a report back on that yet, but should have something to write about it in my next post, which will be next week!

Stay tuned!

Second Dry Mass Test @hawksbillhops

David inspected the lupulin in this Cascade cone.

After our first test two weeks ago, David suggested that we wait a week to test the dry mass of the Hawksbill Hop Yards Cascades again last weekend.  So I went out to gather another 100 gram sample that I could dry to see if we were finally ready to harvest.

Half of the sample for this dry mass test.

As I mentioned, we are only harvesting the Cascade this year - while we had a showing in the Chinook and Columbus, we had nothing to speak of from the Goldings and the Fuggles.  We'll have a closer look at what to do about the other varieties over the winter, but one thing is clear:  the Cascades are thriving!  We have five rows of them - about 300 plants.






Just like last week, I put the sample in the dehydrator and ran it for 24 hours to evaporate all the moisture away.  This week, I turned the temperature up to 135 degrees, warmer than we would process them at, but I wanted to be sure to drive out all the moisture.  At the end I weighed the hops to determine the dry mass.


The results were right on the money - 25 grams.  So our dry mass is at 25%, in the zone, and we were ready to harvest.

Final results of the second test - 25% dry mass!

And that's a good thing - most of the activities related to the harvest must be scheduled in advance, and we had estimated that it would be this week.  Our ShenPaCo crew was standing by, and David had the picking area set up under the barn - and the Hop-N-Ator 4000 was reassembled and ready for testing as well.

David has sent me some photos of harvest activities and I'll post them tomorrow.  We're really looking forward to seeing how the bines did this year, their second year!

@hawksbillhops Preparing for the Hops Harvest - Dry Matter Test

Here are the raw hops in the dehydrator.

We're getting close to harvest time for Hawksbill Hop Yards.  This year, while the bines are still maturing, we are looking for ways to improve our harvest and processing efforts - we potentially will use an oasting and pelletizing service this year, for example.

The folks that operate the processing center in Loudoun County, Organarchy, have requested that we measure dry matter in our hops, which involves a little test of a sample picked from the field.  There's a guide video from the University of Vermont here - and essentially that is the test I ran overnight last Friday and Saturday.

I picked just about 100 grams of wet hops for the test - enough to fill one tray of a typically vegetable dryer.  Then I ran it at high temperature overnight, actually around 15 hours.

Calculation notes - our hops are not ready to pick.

Using the calculations in the video, I had determined that the target weight of the dry matter in my sample would be around 23 grams.  This means that the difference between 100 grams of raw hops and the 23 grams of dry hops is all moisture that would evaporate out of the cones during the process.

Our test results show a higher number, which we interpreted as meaning they are not ready yet.  We'll run a test again next weekend.

There are other "rules of thumb" methods we can use for a sanity check.  For one thing, many of the hops growers south of us are already harvesting - they are in different USDA zones than us, so we can make an adjustment based on that information to estimate when the hops will be ready, in this case, about three weeks later.

After the test, I broke a cone apart for inspection.
Lupulin city!

One of my commitments to the hops farm is that we will continuously learn and improve our processes.  For example, last year we may have harvested early, because we used most of the other farms as a guide.  But they're south of us - so now we adjusted for the ag zone and added this dryness test.

Also last year, we did a lot of work to figure out how to oast the hops.  We didn't get them quite to where we want them to be, so we decided to hold this year's crop off the larger market to make sure that we get the process correct (we will sell them all to Hawksbill Brewing in Luray, which will open this fall or winter, so that they can use the local product in their beers).  Once I can be sure of a consistently high quality product, I will take them back to the market.

Next year, many of our bines will be three years old, and at full maturity.  The yields will be good, and with refined processes we should have plenty to sell to Virginia brewers.