Recapping 2014: Those Brewing Adventures

Brewing a batch of Black Widow IPA with fresh hops.

When I started this little recap series, I mentioned how the topics in my blog posts have evolved since I started Hawksbill Cabin in 2007 – from the projects renovating the place in the early days, to getting to know SNP through a series of hikes and research, up to now, when my posts are dominated by brewing and other beer related subjects.  This morning I did a quick scan of the posts in 2014, and there was not a month that went by when I didn’t write something on the topic, so I guess it is fitting to close out the year with one more post about brewing.

A glass of the finished product.

I started brewing with one gallon kits in 2011 – I’d grown interested in it over the years as friends and acquaintances would break out fresh brews they’d made for the holidays, dinner parties, or for no reason except friends getting together.  My friend Stan has been brewing for more than 20 years, and so has neighbor Dan – they both invited me to help them on a brew day, as did Brendan, and that’s all it took.  My formative beer-drinking experiences were spent in my 20’s in Berlin (the base I was stationed at was near a brewery, in fact!) and Western Europe, so I suppose that only added to my interest.

Dan at the start of his harvest in July.

Starting from those three basic ingredients outlined in the Reinheitsgebot – the German purity law – which were water, hops, and barley (yeast isn’t listed but is at least as important as the others), there is plenty of room to create something new and special.  I guess that is what I like about it: in addition to the styles to try and master – saisons, farmhouse ales, porters, stouts, IPAs, bitters, and (someday) lagers – you can vary the ingredients to produce a craft that ranges from honey lavender kolsch to whiskey barrel porter (I’ve made or I'm making both!)…there’s simply a lot left to try and do.

Some of Dan's Cascade hops in the dryer.

Looking back on the year as a brewer – I’d have to rate the experience of picking Bill’s hops and then brewing those IPAs (here and here) as one of the biggest successes of the year.  Not only did I get to extensively use a locally produced ingredient (and I still have enough left for two more batches), but the black IPA recipe was adopted and customized for my equipment.  I went as far as to dry hop some commercial hops at the end for aroma in order to be sure I had a well-rounded product I could be proud of – and it was that.

Hops picking with Bill and John, maybe one
of my favorite photos of the year, too.

In 2015 there are going to be a number of opportunities to create beers with local ingredients again – there’ll be the hops, of course, and there is a crop of Page County grown barley that was recently malted for brewing by my friends at the Blue Ridge Brewers Association.  We used that barley recently for a batch at Dan's brewery.  Plus, there are local ingredients that we can add to make unique beers:  honey, lavender, cucumbers, watermelon, and pumpkins – not to mention the rye whiskey they’re distilling around these parts!  It will be a good year for brewing, building on all that I’ve learned in 2014.

A portion of the fresh Cascade hops from
Bill's hop yard.

One of the vendors I buy a lot of my ingredients from has a motto:  “Brew, share, enjoy.” That’s probably the part of the experience that is most important to me, especially the “good friends” part of sharing and enjoying.  So here’s to all of you, readers – have a great 2015, and most importantly, enjoy the journey!

Recapping 2014: Backyard Hops

Homebrew and home grown hops.  What's not to like?

Not long after we bought Hawksbill Cabin, we met our neighbors Dan and Sally just up the hill.  They have what is probably the oldest house in the neighborhood – and one that probably has been the scene of many summer parties.  Along with everything else they are famous for, these days, Dan has a small hop yard and brews some delicious beer out in the barn, which we call Beaver Run Brewery.

Certainly the beer is a worthy topic, but I have posted on it plenty of times in the past.  Today I want to write a recap about home grown hops, which Dan introduced me to last year, (and I've learned a lot more about it through the Virginia hops growing community).  Now I've got a couple of plants going on, and some other friends and neighbors do, too – some of them growing second generation plants off of Dan’s rhizomes.

Dan, adding home grown hops at Beaver Run Brewery.

In Dan’s backyard, he has about a tenth of an acre set up with around two dozen plants, representing five or six varieties of hops - see the harvest post here.  The Cascade plants have been the most successful, but he also has Fuggles, Goldings, Centennials, and others.  I think one I am forgetting is Willamettes, but they haven’t done so well.

I frequently benefit from his production, and I’ve used the dried hops in several different brews – Cascades in ales, and the Fuggles in porters.  One thing leads to another, and I decided to put a couple of rhizomes in at the house in Alexandria.

My Willamette bine in Alexandria.

First I tried Goldings, which did produce in the first year, but not so much in the second; I also have a Willamette plant that produced a small harvest in the first year, so I used the hops during secondary fermentation of a recent batch of honey porter.

John and Bill picking Cascades.

Bill's fresh picked Cascade hops.

One of the highlights of the hops season for me this year, however, was the opportunity to help our friend Bill with his harvest of Cascade hops.  He got the rhizomes from Dan – I think there are six – and they were prolific, ready to harvest in the July-August time frame.  I was out for the weekend Bill decided to pick them, and invited myself along to help.

It’s hard to describe how rewarding it was, sweating profusely while picking those herbs, all of which we knew would be going to use to flavor and preserve some delicious home brews.  Only, who would be the brewer?  I was very surprised when Bill offered them to me.

I mentioned that his plants were prolific – we probably picked six pounds of wet hops.  If we were dehydrating them, that would come down to about a pound and a half – enough for thirty gallons of craft beer. 

Black Widow IPA - the first batch from Bill's Cascades.

So far I’ve used the hops in two five-gallon batches of what I am calling “Black Widow IPA” – it’s an adapted IPA recipe that comes out at around 7.5% ABV.  I’ve shared some with Bill, obviously, to acknowledge his green thumb, and with John, seen in the picture above helping with the harvest. 

I’ve even enjoyed a glass or two with Dan, so that this hop growing thing has come full circle.

This part of the brewing adventure still has a way to go.  I’m looking forward to the 2015 season to see what we get – and I still have a couple of batches to make with last year’s Cascades!

Recapping 2014 - All Those Brewery Tours

A taproom highlight: beer pairings at Boulevard.

Since I first wrote the title for this post, I’ve come to realize that it’s technically inaccurate: although I count the total as 8 for the number of breweries I visited during 2014, only three of these stops included brewery tours – and clarifying further, since I usually visit Beaver Run Brewery (Dan’s homebrew operation) to help out with brewing chores, that one can’t really be counted as a brewery tour either.

What I’m saying here is that the post should be renamed “All Those Taproom Visits” or some such, and it definitely should make note of Mary’s patience for the five stops we made during the Bay Area vacation last spring.  But I will footnote that there were two or three more on that list that we should have added, and would have – if the point of the vacation had been to get me to taprooms.  That is a good idea that I will keep in mind for future trips back to California.

An old favorite - North Coast,
in Fort Bragg, CA.

The opportunity to make all those stops at the breweries in Northern California was good loop closure for me – back when we first made the trip from Cloverdale to Mendocino on California Highway 128, there were still only a few vineyards and breweries along the way.  Most famously there was Anderson ValleyBrewing Company in Boonville – a place that has really grown over the years.

Hop yards at AVBC.

We were there early enough in the day to have a lot of privacy to check out the grounds – it was pretty clear how popular the place must be from all the indoor and outdoor seating near the tasting room.  A couple of other highlights for me was the strings of hops planted randomly around the operation, and their commitment to sustainable operations. 

Home of Pliny.

We also visited the North Coast Brewery in Fort Bragg – another favorite from our earliest visits, and a place that has really grown since then.  Besides the opportunity to taste “Pliny the Elder” in person at Russian River, a final highlight was our stop at 21^st Amendment during one of the touring days in San Francisco (thanks Brian!).

Brian, enjoying Hell or High Watermelon
at the 21st Amendment Tap Room.

As if all of this brewery fun wasn’t enough, in October I visited Cocoran Brewery in Purcellville, Virginia, as part of my ongoing research about hop farming in Virginia.  I got there early enough to have a good look around at the operation, then there was a big meeting with the Old Dominion Hops Cooperative.  After the informative talks, the brewery was opened for some tastings…and I indulged.

The barrels at Cocoran.

Finally, though, the Boulevard Smokestack Tour in Kansas City earlier this month was, without question, the best brewery visit of the 2014 lot.  I was in conversation with them all of Monday morning via Twitter, as my colleague Eric and I made our way from DC on different flights.  We managed to arrive with plenty of time to visit the tasting room, and conveniently, we were able to join the tour. 

Their hospitality was endless, it seems – they welcomed us with a couple of pours once we figured out we had some time on our hands.  Plus, there was a glass of “Tank 7” to enjoy during the tour itself, and of course, it ended with paired tastings of some of the beers on tap. 

The sign at Boulevard.

I’m fortunate that my friends at Bethesda Market carry a number of these beers so I have convenient access to them – it’s so convenient, I like to call the place “my local” – so, once I’d had a few of these choices right there at the brewery, I was delighted to find them right there on the shelves in Bethesda!

My homebrewing hobby is only three years old at the moment, but I like to think that these experiences provide a framework for some innovation in 2015 – not only in my mastery of new techniques and recipes, but also in my quest to maximize the types of local ingredients in the beers I make.  That’s the topic I’ll take on tomorrow when I post about my own experiments growing backyard hops – and those of some friends and neighbors in the Shenandoah Valley.    

Recapping 2014: Our Bay Area Vacation

Bay Bridge pano from the Oakland ferry.

Mary at the Mendocino Headlands.

In the early and mid-90’s, Mary and I started going to the Bay Area on vacations.  My interest in the area dated back a few years to when I went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey; we made some day trips up to San Francisco and I quickly agreed it was “everybody’s second home town.”  We’d had a few friends who ended up settling there, so the area became a natural destination for us once we began to seriously think about getaways.

Picnic lunch at Roederer Estates.

Eventually, we had a great string going, using San Francisco as the base for trips down to Monterrey and Carmel, out to Yosemite, and north to Mendocino (with day trips to Napa and Sonoma thrown in, of course).  So this year, we decided on a trip to Mendocino for the third time – our last trip there was in 2002, I think – with quick visits to a few friends as time permitted.

The Glass Beach at Fort Bragg.

Looking at all the posts with the label “Vacation 2014” – I ended up posting about our activities quite a bit.  But in addition to catching up with some friends, there were some highlights, for sure:

• The picnic lunch at Roederer Estate, where we bought the champagne we enjoyed at our wedding
• Visiting the Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, just north of Mendocino
• Hikes around the headlands, especially our visit to Point Cabrillo Lighthouse (my post here)

There was a whole lot more to the Bay Area trip, such as the two excellent touring days we had in San Francisco proper, wonderful meals just about everywhere we went – and of course, all the brewery tours that coincidentally made their way into our itinerary…and those will be part of the basis for tomorrow’s post, which will focus on the brewery tours!

Blogging 2014 - A Year In Review

A view of the Point Cabrillo Light from Caspar.

By way of closing out the year, I thought I might do a series of posts looking back on the activities and events I blogged about in 2014.  I’d made a strategic decision about blogging in general, to reduce the pace that I’ve kept up since starting Hawksbill Cabin back in 2007 – settling in at around 12 posts per month, down from the 16-20 I’ve been doing. I needed to do this, since I have been periodically making posts for my company's blog, and I keep a second one called Rescue My IRA, posting five or six times a month there.

I was glad to see that the lower level of production hasn’t really affected the number of views on any given post, typically from 30-40 on each, although some generate a lot more.  Those highly viewed ones are the ones I want to revisit in the retrospective, although I am going to add one additional one to the series…so here are the topics, in order:

Our hostess in Mountain View.

·         Our vacation to the Bay Area and Mendocino

·         Brewery tours in 2014

·         Backyard hops

·         Brewing with fresh hops

It’s amusing that in the life of the blog my typical topics have evolved this way…from the home repairs of the early posts (Big Projects), to all the outdoor activities (Easy and Moderate day hikes, for example) of those intervening years, so that now I find myself writing about beer a lot.  Brewing – and drinking – good beer is a great hobby and creative outlet, one that has introduced me to quite a few new friends and enthusiasts. 

Fresh cascade hops - Luray grown!

I think I’ll keep it up for 2015 – and hopefully will have some news of grand new brewing adventures along the way.  Also, I do hope to get out for more hikes in my beloved Shenandoah National Park and the Shenandoah Valley this year as well, in fact I have resolved to do that and will make a post about it early in January.  

First, though, let’s get the retrospective started with some recap posts, beginning tomorrow!