Trust a Firefighter with your Beer

Here's the storefront to the brewery.  Yes -
founded by firefighters!

On my way down to the hops conference in Richmond last weekend I made a goal of visiting one of the brewers that bought hops from me after the 2015 harvest.  Maltese was the only one of five breweries I hadn't yet made it to, so I was very happy that I could route my trip for a stop!


The brewery (home page) is about two miles from down town Fredericksburg.  It's less than a year old - I just learned they'd only been in operation a month or two at the time of the harvest.  It was a treat a few weeks later to get the photo of their brewer putting together a pale ale with Hawksbill Hops!

The firefighting tradition is strong at Maltese Brewing.

As I walked in, the place was just opening - there was a barbecue food truck getting set up, and a few customers had already settled into bar stools.  I got a flight - a wheat ale, a pale ale actually two - their "'Merica" and "Priscilla," and the coffee brown ale.  These were all very enjoyable, and while I was sampling, the proprietor gave me a tour.


We had a look at the two barrel brew kitchen and the fermentation room.  I also looked into the cold room, and saw all the tasting room areas.

This mural greats you at the door to the brewery.

They started out in a single bay storefront, but recently acquired the lease on the adjoining space so they can double their footprint.  I had a look at the construction in progress - it's coming along.
When it is done, they'll even be able to open up the back a little bit to make a beer garden.

The success of this place is a testament to what's happening in Virginia craft beer.  It's really been a treat to get to know "my brewers" from around the state.  We talked a bit about the 2016 harvest, and it looks like we'll be working together again.

I loved this quote on their webpage:

"We have pride in our jobs and love what we do.  These values and characteristics are not just limited to firefighting but carry over to everything we do, including brewing beer!  We hope this shows when you drink our beer.  Brewing is truly a craftsmanship and we take great pride in it.  You're welcome America."



And they have a great motto, too:
Trust a fireman with your life?  Then trust us with your beer!

The 2016 South Atlantic Hops Conference - part 2

I guess that one of the things farmers do at conferences is to check out the gear.  At the hops conference in Richmond over the weekend, there were two hops harvesters available to check out.  I took some time to have a look - they were the Hopsharvester machine and the Hopstar machine.

Here's the Hopshavester machine - there is a
demo video on YouTube here.

There are at least two other machines I know about - the Wolf Harvester, which is of German manufacture, and the Bine Implement - made in Wisconsin, I understand, and just off the market.  I've sponsored a couple of Kickstarter projects for farms that were trying to get one of the Wolfs - a fellow up in New York and another one for Huguenot Hops in Richmond.  

For my part, I've been checking out the Hopsharvester and was glad to have a look at it in person.  Plus the team at the conference was great.  I understand they're headed to another conference soon, where they'll meet Andrew from Cascade Hop Farm in Oregon - they used one of these during last year's harvest, and gave it good reviews.

This is the Hopstar machine, made in Virginia.

The second harvester I checked out was the yellow Hopstar machine.  This one is manufactured in Virginia, and there's no web site for it yet.  Unlike the Hopsharvester, this one is oriented vertically, so that instead of dragging the bines over the pickers, they pass between parallel rows of them.  

Otherwise the sorting is the same, with blowers and a series of conveyor belts that allow the leaves and stems to separate from the cones.  

In my photo, one of my fellow hop farmers, Justen, is checking out the sorting mechanism.  He has Kelly Ridge Farm down in southwestern Virginia.

There were more than a dozen conference sponsors this year, and 10 or so displays with information about products and processes.  I was really impressed with how far the community has come in a year.  

That's especially true when you think of the two harvesters.  As my friend Andrew says, "Innovation is a sign of a healthy industry!"  He's on to something.

The 2016 South Atlantic Hops Conference - part 1

Note:  after I published this post, a few of the attendees and organizers of the read the post and offered some edits.  I've edited the portions where I received comments and updates.  Thanks to all for the reveiws! - JT) 

Last year during the planning stages for Hawksbill Hop Yards I attended what was then called "The North Carolina - Virginia Regional Hops Conference" - there's a link to my post on the conference here.  I'm guessing that around 150 people attended that event, which was held in Winston-Salem, NC.

I found this photo of the conference on-line.  Full house - and yeah, that's me
in the right foreground.

Flash forward just about a year later, and not only is our hop yard built and now a year old, but there is a whole lot more interest in growing hops for the regions rapidly expanding craft brewing industry.  So much so, in fact, that nearly 300 people attended the conference this year. The name was even changed to reflect growing regional interest - farmers from Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and even Florida attended.

Here's a model of a hop yard.  The design is similar to ours.

Like last year, a large share of the conference was organized by NC State, but there is a growing interest at Virginia Tech, which sent along its share of specialists.  On Saturday, there were 10 sessions for growers:

• The Status of the Industry, presented by Ann George of the Washington Hop Commission,, Hop Growers of America
• Small-scale Hop Yard Construction, by David Goode of Piedmont Hops
• Harvesting Hops and Quality Issues, by James Altwies of Gorst Valley Hops
• Growing and Marketing Hops on a Diversified Farm, by Dan Gridley of Farm Boy Farms
• Hops and Beer Chemistry in the South Atlantic, by Ken Hurley of Virginia Tech
• All About Starter Plants, a panel
• Managing Downy Mildes on Hops in the South, by Lina Quesada-Ocampo of NC State
• What Brewers Want and Experiences with Local Hops, a panel
• Processing Hops, by James Altwies



Here's Nat from ODHC with his "mini-oast" - he developed this
for one row of late harvest hops in his fields.

• New Opportunities, Best Practices in Self-Certification Program, by Ann George

It was a lot to choose from and sometimes it was difficult to decide which one to go to - I made my way through the processing and quality series, since we're already underway.  I learned quite a bit, and managed to get some networking in with my colleagues from the Old Dominion Hops Cooperative.

I wasn't able to get down there for the first day of the conference, which was Friday.  There were sessions that day as well, and there was a tour of three of the Richmond-area hop yards.  I'm told that there were more than 110 people on the tours, enough to need to separate them into two buses of 50+ each.  After the farm tours, they made brewery stops at Hardywood Park, Ardent Craft, and Strangeways, all of whom have been known to brew with local hops.  

All in all, a successful trip.  Now we're looking forward to the 2016 growing season!

Spring Weeding @hawksbillhops

Last weekend I took a walk through the hop yard to have a look at what we were going to need to do to get underway for the year.  Afterwards I walked down the hill into David's wood lot and we made some plans while he took a break from busting up a red oak that had fallen during the winter.

We had left up about 150 of the coir strings after the harvest - the first year yields on our Goldings and Fuggles weren't worth picking, so we left the bines up for a few more weeks of sunshine.  The fall weather changed so quickly on us that we never took them down, but we knew that needed to be a high priority.



David was making plans to bring our friends from ShenPaco out to do some work around other parts of the farm, so we decided we would work with those guys again for a couple of days of weeding.

He sent along some photo highlights.  That first one is of Kenny, up in the basket doing some work on the high cable at the top of the trellis.  That cable is stretched across the matrix of the trellis at 16 feet, so he is really up there!

In the second photo, the rest of the team is working on weeding the rows.  From the location, I'm guessing this is one of the Columbus/CTZ rows at the far eastern edge of the yard.  There was a lot of skunk cabbage in the area there - probably some hard work to pull all of it out!

Now, the final photo of the day is one David took after they completed their work, just before that little snow squall moved through on Thursday afternoon.  Looking good!

David had bush hogged out many of the larger the winter weeds before the team got started on the rows.  We have fescue in as a cover crop, and that is doing the job for us in the drive rows.

Now that this key piece is taking care of, we have a couple of activities ahead before the growing season begins.  We'll get some litter spread across the yard for nutrients, and then David is going to make a pass with pre-emergents to help us keep down some of the weeds.

We'll have another spring planting event this year in April or May - we haven't set the schedule yet.  We are adding a row of Chinook in the blank row we had left between the Chinook and CTZ, and we are going to take out the half row of Centennial we put in as an experiment so that we can replace it with another row of Fuggles.

I hope to save the Centennials in some planters until we can expand. I've had a couple of requests for this variety, like I did for the Chinook.  The Hawksbill Brewing Company team plans to use the Fuggles we grow in stouts and porters, so that new row is a must to serve our customers!

Things I Saw from Airplanes

My first ever air travel was the day of my enlistment, back in April, 1980.  It was a series of flights from Jacksonville to San Antonio – but it was evening, and dark, so you couldn’t see anything from the plane.

The next time I flew, however, was from San Antonio to Monterey, California, via Dallas and San Francisco.  I saw the Grand Canyon from the air that time, and the Golden Gate Bridge.  For a long time afterwards, I sought out the window seat because of that.

In business and as tourists, we do fly a lot these days, and I probably take it for granted.  I fly enough that I generally go for the aisle seat now, and I’ll pay the extra to get the exit row.  It means I usually miss the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, and the Pentagon when we’re on approach into National, but so be it.

The window seat strategy paid off a few times.  A few years after the flight to Monterey, coming back from vacation on a flight from Palma, Mallorca to Berlin, Germany, we flew directly over the Matterhorn and Mount Blanc.  Those are not destinations I’m likely to ever visit on the ground, but I was glad for the chance to see them from 30,000 feet.

There was a flight from Almaty, Kazakhstan, to Amsterdam, when first and business class were so full of diplomats and business executives that there were only five of us back in coach.  We had full 5-seat center rows to sleep in if we wanted (and they offered us seconds on every meal served!) – but I kept waking up to go have a look out the window.  Just as dawn caught up with us I looked down to see a Russian pipeline below, stretching from horizon to horizon, with the Black Sea in the distance.

In business school we took a study trip to Stockholm and Helsinki, with the first leg from LA to Seattle.  The skies were clear over Oregon, and looking down I spied Crater Lake directly below us, just like that time with the Matterhorn.  On another flight into Seattle, I caught a glimpse of the awesome business end of Mount St. Helens – I guess there’s just about always something to see, if you pay attention.

I can’t say there were a lot of pleasant highlights during my two years at Booz Allen, it was a pretty sucky professional environment back then.  But I was lucky enough to land a project that had me flying monthly to LA over the course of six months.  I learned that if I booked the Sunday late evening flight out of Baltimore, I could get a first class upgrade – often a window seat (I’ll make exceptions).

I found this aerial view of Las Vegas on line.  The photo wasn't credited.
It's similar to what I described in the post.

On that flight, the descent into Los Angeles begins in the Nevada desert, and it always woke me up from a nap.  If it had been daylight, I can imagine that I would have seen the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead below, but it was night.  There lay the full neon glory of the Las Vegas Strip, sparkling like jewels in the night.

Chicago to Tokyo, in 2011; I worked hard to book that flight and ended up in the last two-seat row on the left window side of the plane, with an empty seat beside me (it’s the small things that make air travel better these days).  That’s a long flight, as anyone who has done it knows, and between nodding off here and there I looked out the window over Alaska.  I image that I saw Denali towering over the cloud layers, with a full spectrum sunset or dawn glowing in the sky above.  It could have been any number of great peaks in that state, but I’m sticking with my claim of Denali.

These days I don’t travel as much for business – it’s more often vacations, and many times that means we’re flying in from the west.  As it happens, the beginning of the descent is over the Shenandoah Valley, and that’s my cue to have a look out the window to see if I can see the river, or perhaps my beloved Luray below.  So far, I haven’t been so lucky – except, this is beautiful country side, and I can’t complain about the view.

WHSV Covers "Grown Here - Brewed Here" - @hawksbillbrew

A few weeks back we posted the brewery's LLC formation to Twitter, and our friends from WHSV saw it.  They reached out to us about the potential for coming out to do a story on the new brewery.

We gave the reported, Emily, a tour of our building and talked about our plans.  After all that, she did an interview - the link below includes the full spot.

http://www.whsv.com/content/news/New-brewer-hopes-to-use-Luray-sourced-beer-ingredients-369601071.html

We're moving forward with this "Grown Here - Brewed Here" idea.  We're not the only ones doing this in the country or Virginia, but we are close enough to Hawksbill Hop Yards to make it real - and hopefully to truly succeed with it.

It will be a goal to feature something Virginia grown, and preferably Page County Grown, in each beer.  That may take us some time to get the supply chains in order, but it's still a great goal.

@hawksbillhops - Last Year's WHSV Story

Last year as we prepared to plant the hop yard, the local station in Harrisonburg - WHSV - came by to check out the farm.  They put up a story on the evening news here:

http://www.whsv.com/home/headlines/Hops-Yard-Opening-in-Page-County-301741191.html

During the piece, David was quoted:  "Agriculture is the number one industry in Page County. It's who we are. So I think any advance, or diversification in agriculture is low-hanging fruit, said Sours. "So this could be an opportunity for economic development and job creation within the county."

Taken during the interview on Saturday.  Thanks, David,
for the snapshot!

So flash forward a year - we had a good first season with the yard, and there's no doubt the farm had a small, but real economic impact.  We're in it for the long haul, and are really looking forward to our second growing season - we're talking with brewers across the state in a couple of locations to supply them with hops.

Now we find ourselves completely occupied with the next step in the venture - developing Luray's original craft brewery, Hawksbill Brewing Company.  WHSV took note of a recent Twitter post about our LLC formation and got back in touch - and last Saturday they came out for interviews.

Soon as a link is available we'll post it here, hopefully in the next blog post.  For now though,  I just gotta say, 

You just never know where the road you're on is going to take you.

"Grown Here - Brewed Here" @hawksbillbrew

My last post outlined some of our core values as we are setting out to develop Hawksbill Brewing Company in Luray, Virginia.  This is a follow-up to that one - I'd like to say a little bit more about how we plan to use local agriculture products.

Hawksbill Brewing Company will be a member of Page County Grown - which features the local food shed in the area.

We'll start with the hops offerings from Hawksbill Hop Yards - that's a no brainer!  At the farm, we had a successful first crop of Cascades, Chinooks, and Columbus hops, which will work easily into some of the recipes.  We hope to see production scale up this year from the Fuggles, and maybe even the Goldings, which will give us even more flexibility and variety.

There is wide spread interest in trying to put together a local source for brewing barley.  At least one farmer has done an experiment, growing an acre, and neighbor Dan took it on as a project to seek out malting support down in Nelson County.  We could see the brewery as a key economic development engine for this crop and hope to be part of that!

As for other ingredients - the basic four "Rheinheitsgebot" ingredients, that is - everybody knows that Page County has some of the best water in the state!  Plus, our friends at Wisteria have long experimented with local yeast with their "Merlot Wild" vintages, so we know we could work towards that goal (over at Pen Druid Brewing in Sperryville, they are hard at work on this research too). 

Since we won't be restricted by the German beer purity law, we see even more opportunity to brew using local ingredients from the farm.  I've used local honey and local herbs in my home brewing experiments, and we plan to develop recipes that can feature these - honey porters and ales, lavender kolsch, and even basil saison.

Blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries are great ingredients to feature in wheat beers, and even stouts.  We'll look for opportunities to use them seasonally.

Pumpkin ales and porters are all the rage, and since David keeps a pumpkin patch there right next to the hops, we'll have a great source for them.  This one in particular is a fall brewing exercise I'm looking forward to - we'll roast the pumpkins (a lot of them!) in order to hit our ingredient requirements for these beers.

A last one that I'll mention today - some fruits that don't immediately come to mind for most people:  watermelon, cantaloupe, and even cucumber will make their way in Hawksbill brews.  Probably a wheat beer for the watermelons, which would be a mid- to late summer seasonal, and saisons for the cantaloupes and cucumbers.  

While we're waiting for a couple of things to come together, we're working on recipes like these during the spring and summer.  Still hoping for a late summer or early fall opening - there are a lot of ducks to get in a row for this, but we're working on it!

More on Hawksbill Brewing Company - @hawksbillbrew

We’re still making daily progress on the plan to open brewery in Page County this fall.  While we’re in the planning stages, I don’t always have something to post about developments – in the meantime, I thought I might put up the guiding principles we’ve set up for Hawksbill Brewing Company:

·       Purpose – Form a local Page County business that combines and promotes two of the community’s strengths – agriculture and tourism

·       People – Enlist the help of others committed to the area and the craft, who in essence, share the vision of creating a local enterprise and products

·       Products – The product must be of the highest quality, because the goal is to sell everything we make, whether ingredients or finished product

·       Process – Seek innovation that stimulates creativity, efficiency, and quality in a craft product – and produce it from Page County Grown and Virginia ingredients

@hawksbillbrew Developments

Since the brewery expects to have a lot of support from "active tourists" - the folks who come to Page County for the triathlon and bicycle races - we picked up our first sponsorship with the Tri.  We'll sponsor the Hawksbill Double - this is the event for triathletes who will compete in both the Sprint and International events!

Link here:  http://luraytriathlon.com/hawksbill-double-triathlon/

We're pretty excited about this partnership - the brewery team has been part of the the Tri as either participants or volunteers for a long time.  When the opportunity came up to join in this new role, we couldn't resist.

As if that wasn't enough, it seems that we've entered a season of a lot of activity with Hawksbill Brewing Company.  For one thing, our LLC is now registered with Virginia, and our lease is just about finalized!

We are designing our space and working out the specs for our brew kitchen - those updates will come soon.  It's just a very exciting time.

Of course there will be more updates to come.

@hawksbillhops Developments

It's the offseason, but there is a lot of planning and early purchasing going on to support the hop yard.  The Old Dominion Hops Co-op had its quarterly meeting, for one thing, at the Bad Wolf Brewery in Manassas.  After the business meeting, some of the members took a brewery tour - the photo above.

Some of the things we've done since the last post are to order our rhizomes for the spring.  I am going to add another row of 60 Chinook; pull out the Centennials and save them for later, but replace them with another row of Fuggles; and add 50 or so Cascades to fill the rows where some plants didn't make it last year.  

I've also spent some time this year doing research on getting an orchard ladder that we can use for minor maintenance during the season.  It will save us from having to run the tractor out if we have a string that needs repair, or for other small adjustments.  

This thing is designed as a tripod, so it has flexibility and stability on unsteady ground.  It's 15 feet tall, but the highest standing platform is 12 or 13 feet, which should allow any of us to reach the top cables of the trellis.  In the photos I am not all the way to the highest standing platform - I am still two steps below it!

As far as purchasing details go, as you might expect for a piece of professional gear like this, it wasn't cheap.  It's Japanese made by Hasegawa, and they have quite a few other styles and heights as well.  The dealer I worked with is New England Ladder Company - click that link rather than a Google search, because you could get some local fire department.

The dealer was absolutely great.  If we need more ladders that's who we will work with, couldn't recommend them more highly.

The road ahead?  Well, there is a meeting with north Valley growers coming up - we'll talk about all these new breweries opening in Edinburg, Woodstock, and Winchester - and see if there are areas where we can collaborate as growers.

Also, there is a regional conference coming up in early March down in Richmond.  I'm planning to attend that, as I did last year in Winston-Salem.  The co-op tells me we have 180 members now, which is incredible!

Stanley Snow Day

Stuck as we were in Alexandria, we didn't get to visit Hawksbill Cabin over the weekend.  We asked neighbor Dan if he could take a look at the place to make sure everything was okay - and asked him to feed Momcat.

Dan and Sally were out on their cross country skis, and made their way over pretty easily.  I'm jealous of that - Mary and I have snowshoes but not skis.  Maybe we'll break down and get some.



I was worried that in our little hollow, which is just on the start of the upslope to the Blue Ridge, we'd get a huge dumping of snow.  But the pictures Dan and Sally sent back don't look so bad - maybe two feet up on the roof there.  In 2010, Snowmaggedon (click on the label for more info about that one) we had quite a bit more snow up on the roof, and hired the roofer to come over and shovel for us.

It's really quite a pretty setting.  Hopefully there'll be some snow left next time I get out, I'd like to go sledding in the front yard!

Alexandria Snow Day

It's hardly news anymore, but we had quite a big snowstorm last weekend.  Today I'll post a few highlights from the dig out in Alexandria, following up on yesterday's post about Luray.

I'll finish up the series with a couple of shots of Hawksbill Cabin, taken by neighbor Dan, tomorrow.  I've tagged this post with Snowmaggedon, as well - that was what we called the 2010 storm, and the label will take you to my posts on that one.

This time, the snow began on Friday evening and continued until very early Sunday morning.  True to form, Sunday was a beautiful sunny day - perfect for all of us to start digging out!






I powered through our stairs and got much of the walks done, and then Mary came out to help.  She found the Equinox, buried over there under a huge drift, and got it most of the way freed.

We learned our lesson from past storms, though, and didn't clear the driveway out to the street - we decided to wait for a plow so we wouldn't have to clear the space twice.

This plan worked fine, except by Monday night the plow still hadn't come.  So we dug out anyway.




We also went around back to dig out.  This was a major storm, around 20 inches of snow with deep drifts.  So I decided to make sure that we could get out the basement door and the sliding glass door in the back of the house.

I also shoveled a path part of the way into the yard so Tessie could get out there (she prefers to go in the street though, I think because she sinks in in the yard).

As a final touch, I cleared the space around the generator - just in case we need to go on generator power.  We're all set!

Luray Snow Day

There was no shortage of coverage of the east coast's 2016 blizzard last weekend.  Mary and I stayed in and watched it from the windows in Alexandria - or virtually on Facebook.

Meanwhile, my friend David was industrious and rigged up his tractor with a plow blade and went to work clearing some of the roads out there.

One of the photos he sent of his progress was this one of the tractor parked in front of the building where we plan to ope Hawksbill Brewing next fall.  I guess he cleared the parking lot there - although that might have been taken care of by the Luray Fire Department, so he was just parked.

He also took a photo of Hawksbill Hop Yards all covered with snow.  The plants are all snuggled in, dormant for the winter.

As I posted last week, that won't be for long - we've already started working on plans for the growing season, which will begin in April!

A Few Ospreys

I've had occasion to go to one of the nearby military bases recently - a couple of times, in fact.  On both visits, I was lucky enough to catch sight of multiple V-22 Ospreys flying overhead.

There's a small landing zone for helicopters near where I park when I am there.  During the first trip over, there were two formations - the three ship I caught in the photos, and another pair following - a total of five aircraft.

I've posted a few times about the fact that despite I spent six years enlisted in the Air Force, because I was stationed in Berlin, Germany, aircraft sightings were rare.  So it gives me a thrill anytime I happen to see a plane in flight.


While I was walking towards the building I needed to visit, the first trio broke formation to come in for landing.  My second photo shows them on approach, using this aircraft's vertical take off and landing capability.

When I was there a few days later, I saw another pair approach and land.  That time, I was in the right place at the right time to see the touchdown - although I was not in a place where I could snap a photo.

It's likely that the V-22 is my most frequently photographed aircraft under this "Airplane Geek" label.  I don't get out much to bases where there are other types of planes - but that would be nice...especially if I could get a shot of an A-10 sometime.

Brewery Progress

We have a lot of irons in the fire now that we decided to take on planning a brewery.  But we did take a moment to celebrate last week, after we got news that the landlord had decided to lease the building to us.  We bought a little banner and had it put up.

Actually, it's not so little - it's actually 9 feet long!  But up there on the building, it looks small.

That's okay, though - we simply wanted to mark the spot so that folks would know where we are going to be located!

Examples of some of the stuff going on in parallel include:

• business formation
• talks with the CPA and attorney
• brew kitchen design
• graphic design (the banner was in PowerPoint - we'll get a professional working on it)
• construction plans for the building

That's just to name a few.  But I'll keep readers up to date here on the blog.  We are hoping to have all of our ducks in a row by the fall.

Hawksbill Hop Yards - 2016

It's probably one of my favorite photos from last year - taken in mid-July when I was starting to see well-formed cones on some of the hop bines.  I'm using it in a direct mail piece to Virginia craft brewers.  This particular one was a CTZ/Columbus cone, and it was a treat to check out the lupulin that was already formed in it.  

While we will be busy getting the brewery together over the course of the next few months, we're not forgetting that we have a farm to run.  We're already planning what to do this year to get things started, for example:

January 2015 - Dan and David looking over the "field" where
we planted the hopyard.

• Buy an orchard ladder to allow us to do minor maintenance in the yard without bringing out the tractor
• Get rhizomes to fill the empty rows and spaces where we didn't get plants - we'll add a Chinook row, replace the Centennials with a second row of Fuggles, and get some Cascades to fill the spaces
• We already ordered the coir twine by grouping with three other farms - we got a good deal for a bulk order - I still need the w-clips
• Need to arrange for a litter application and get things rolling

We'll have a volunteer event, probably in April this year, to do a little clean up over in the yard, to pull out the Centennials, and to plant the two new rows.

Looking back on some of the photos of the early season activities, I can't wait to get to it!

What's Next, Hawksbill Cabin?

While I did meet my goal of 8 posts per month during 2015, I took a break beginning in early December and that has turned into my longest hiatus from blogging since I started Hawksbill Cabin back in 2007. 

It’s a fun thing to look back at all the labels over there in the right hand column and to think of all the great memories I have.  My “Life in the Valley” has really come a long way!

This year will be no different – I’ll try to keep the same pace of about 100 posts this year, although I do plan that the topics will be more focused. 

…and what will those be, you ask? 

Well, for one thing, the Hops Yard is going to be in its second year of operation, so that is one of the bigger topics.

Another one?

Also, we’ve really buckled down in our thinking about opening a brewery in Luray – and I can announce now that we are in the final stages of putting our lease together for 22 Zerkel Street. 

The working title of the brewery is “Hawksbill Brewing Company” – there’ll be plenty of posts to follow on this one!  We hope to get all of our ducks in a row and all of our cats hearded by September 2016.

Until next time, happy 2016!

Visiting Hopkins Ordinary

We took a little drive over to Sperryville on the weekend – I wanted to show Mary one of the craft breweries over there.  This one is located in the basement of a bed and breakfast called Hopkins Ordinary.  We’d stopped by once before, in the summer, so I could deliver some hops from Hawksbill Hop Yards to them.

There is a second brewery in Sperryville called Pen Druid – we’ll hit that one sometime this winter, and I’m sure she’ll enjoy it as much as this one.  One of our discoveries was the addition of a new beer garden on the grounds there, complete with tables and a firepit.  That’s where we decided to do our tasting.

They typically will have a good range of offerings on tap at Hopkins Ordinary, and many of the beers include a local ingredient or two.  I think everything that was available during our visit used local malt procured from Copper Fox Distillery, and the saison used local persimmons.  The offerings on tap were:

• Little Devil Blonde
• Fallen Fruit Saison
• Stoney Man ESB
• Wildflower Honey Brown Ale
• Smiggy’s Wee Heavy Scottish Strong Ale
• Innkeepers IPA

We had a nice time sitting outside by the firepit.  Looking forward to more adventures over on that side of the mountain – they’re neighbors, after all!

The Fall Soup

Some of the Thanksgiving traditions we enjoy is the curried butternut squash soup I have been making for the last 20 years or so.  This year was no different – even though we couldn’t get down to North Carolina to join the family, we did have a visit with friends in Bethesda, and I made the soup.

Although I do follow the recipe closely, each year it is a little different – by the way, the link at the end of this post will take you to one that has the recipe.  Variations come from the type of winter squash used (I have used acorn squash, butternut, and banana squash – but there are plenty of others), the type of stock and amount of juice used (the last few editions have been vegetable stock, but I’ve used chicken stock before; also I’ve substituted wine or cider for the juice component of the recipe), or the type and amount of curry used (I always start with about a quarter of what’s specified and add more to taste).

Adding to the excitement this year, the kitchen tool that I use for dicing the onions broke while I was working on the batch, and then our old blender had broken as well.  Fortunately, we got a new Cuisinart food processor this year – that actually made the whole thing easier!  

I doubled the recipe for this year because the headcount for the meal was more than I had prepared for in the past.  We calculated that there was a gallon and a half of soup!  There are leftovers!

In any case, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I did as well – so all’s good.   Here’s that link that includes the recipe:

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/11/curried-winter-squash-soup.html

Winter is Coming

Last week we had a warm spell that was atypical of Thanksgiving week.  Even so, the stores are getting ready for holiday shoppers, and Mary and I happened to spy this display at an outdoors store out in the ‘burbs.  One of them in particular got me to thinking about winter fun – and I was even wishing for a decent snow this year!

If you’re wondering what these toys are, they are called minibobs – I’ve called them minibogs in the past, but I’m going with the easier term from here on out.  I bought a couple of these a few years ago, based on some fond memories of using them on ski slopes in the Harz Mountains, way back when I was stationed in Germany with the Air Force. 

Here’s a link to an earlier post about the minibobs! 

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2013/01/sled-run.html

The Replacement

Somewhere around 1988, I became a convert to GM cars.  We've had four of them since then - all of them providing transportation well into the 100K miles range.  I even drove the first one, a 1988 Oldsmobile, to LA, passing 111,111 miles on the way out of DC - and 122,222 on the way back - before finally trading it in with 145K miles!

The most recent iteration was a 2005 Chevy Equinox, which I happened to purchase from Carmax in 2010 with 40K miles on it.  The price was great, and my first experience with Carmax was excellent.  We subsequently sold our 1999 Malibu to them (120K miles), leaving us with the Equinox and a 2003 Impala (135K miles).

Flash forward to the little vacation we took out in the Valley early this month.  We were on our way to check out the new brewery in Woodstock when we hit a buck.  Mary and I were both okay, but neither the buck nor the Equinox (116K miles) made it.

I took a few photos of the car that night in the darkness.  You can make out that it was a serious accident and that we were fortunate to not be hurt.  But you still don't get the impression the car is totaled - and it took State Farm about a week to figure that out for us as well.

Meanwhile I rented a car from Enterprise for a week and checked in with State Farm.  When they finally told us it was going to be totaled, I started shopping for a replacement - a late model Chevy Equinox.

The one I eventually settled on is a 2012, at the same Carmax where I got the old one.  This time the car only has 24K miles on it.  We've had it for a week now, and everything seems just great with it.

We'll be taking it out to the Valley next weekend...maybe we'll make it up to that brewery in Woodstock at last.  But we probably won't take it out much at night just now, not while the rut is on!

Momcat the Barncat

Sitting out on the brick terrace with a cup of coffee is one of my favorite weekend activities at Hawksbill Cabin.  As the winter comes on, the angle of the sun combines with the house’s orientation to make it fairly warm, and I’ll light up the fire pit for good measure to add some comfort.  Also, Momcat likes to hang out there.

This little cat has been hanging around the place for four years or so – she’s the definition of an outside pet.  I think she had two litters of kittens before we had her spayed (we worked with Cats Cradle in Harrisonburg – her clipped ear is the sign for this) and we ended up adopting her daughter as an indoor cat (and Buster!).  We invited Momcat to join us first, but she lives on her own terms.

Instead, we’ve provided a couple of little shelters out by the garage for her and some of the other barncats to hang out in when it is cold.  We recruited a neighbor to help out with feeding them – we provide a couple of bags of food per month for the four or five barncats around here (all fixed by Cats Cradle).

Momcat did give us a scare last year – she disappeared for a while.  I took a photo of her in May 2014 before we went on our vacation to Mendocino and the Bay Area, and then we didn’t see her again until last winter.  Our theory was that she had been chased off by an unaltered male stray that hung around here for a while, who’s moved on now.

In any case – this little mouser is a good friend of ours.  We’re always happy to find her hanging around.

Brewing with @hawksbillhops

Since the hops harvest last August, I have worked on various experiments combining some of the hops varieties in a black IPA recipe I put together.  As an ode to “The Big Lebowski” I’ve tried naming the output on variations of “a black steer’s tuckus on a moonless night” – because the beer is quite dark. 

Some in the craft beer writing crowd actually call these beers over-hopped porters, which may be fair.  The current recipe I’m working with offers hints of toasted malt while leaving a reminder that it was brewed by a hops farmer – I’ve used 6 to 8 ounces of hops in each five-gallon batch so far.  The hops bill features either CTZ or Chinook bittering hops and Cascade for aroma; in addition, I dry-hopped the first two batches with either Cascades or some commercial Chinook pellets.

The batch in the photo here is still in primary as I’m posting this, but will be moved into secondary over the next few days.  It was done with the CTZ hops as bittering.  I don’t plan to dry hop this one.

On the ABV front, the two finished batches have gone at 7.2% (CTZ) and 6.8% (Chinook), I expect this batch to come in somewhere near those numbers as well.  The IBU calculations were around 60 for the CTZ batch and 45 for the Chinook, this most recent one will be closer to the original CTZ batch.

This kind of experimentation is a new stage of my homebrew experience.  I’ve had solid results with Porters, and the honey lavender kolsch was well received.  I could probably stand to try some lagering experiments and it goes without saying I should be looking into all-grain brewing, but I am not ready to make the time commitment for mastering those processes, especially while I am doing all of this in Mary’s kitchen!

To sum up the batches I’ve brewed to date with the Hawksbill Hops harvest, there are:

• Batch 1: CTZ and Cascade, with a Cascade dry hop, delivering 7.2% and 60 IBU;
• Batch 2: Chinook and Cascade, with a commercial Chinook pellet dry hop, delivering 6.8% and 45 IBU; and
• Batch 3: Same recipe as batch 1 but no dry hop, and I substituted Maris Otter extract for part of the standard I'd used before; ABV/IBUs TBD .

There will be a batch four, it will be all Chinook, but I won’t brew that one until January.  I have in mind to make another go of a whisky barrel porter in the meantime; it will be bottled by the holidays but not ready for drinking until February 1.  My goal on that one would be to offer a near-stout experience that can be enjoyed in front of the fireplace. 

Hawksbill Summit - November 2015 edition

Besides hitting a deer midway through my vacation in the Valley, I had the opportunity to get out for a little day hike, choosing Hawksbill Mountain in Shenandoah National Park as my destination (link here).  

As I drove to the park and then along Skyline Drive, I calculated in my mind that this was the first time this year I had been in the park – so I resolved to savor the trip and see if I could get a few good photographs.

Included in the post are some panoramic views of the Valley, taken from the drive as I passed milestones on the way to the trailhead – including Stonyman (wikipedia link), and the approach to Hawksbill (wikipedia link).  I’m including the shot I always love to get of Old Rag (wikipedia link)from the summit, as well as one of the evergreens that can be seen along the trail.  

We’ve had a stretch of unseasonably warm days, Indian summer style.  The change left the air clear of haze, and gave unusually clear views of the valley below.

The Hawksbill Summit trail I most often take starts at the upper parking area and is a 2.1 mile out-and-back route with 520 feet of elevation change (there are a couple of up-and-downs, so the net gain is less, around 400 feet).  I consider it an easy day hike – it’s a leg stretcher I enjoy whenever I have the time for a short hike in the park, with some incredible views from the summit.

I was really glad to check the box on a trip to the park this fall.  I hope that I’ll have another chance later this month or early December, weather permitting!

Seasons of the Road Kill: The 9-pointer

In my last post I mentioned the pace at work, which had been deadline intensive since the summer.  We’re in the process of delivering our new 200K+ SF building, with construction finished in August and interior fit out in progress through December - then the 300+ tenants will move in.  I needed a break, so I scheduled a week of vacation at Hawksbill Cabin last week to get in some hiking and enjoy the change in the weather by sitting outside on the brick terrace.

Mary joined me after a few days, and we planned a scouting trip up to the new Woodstock Brew House, one of the Valley’s newest craft brewers.  To get there, we climb over the New Market gap on US 211 and then take the Valley Pike, US 11, north for 20 miles or so.  Maybe it is a long way to go for dinner, but here in the Valley, the drive is worth it for the unique experiences offered.

As we exited the town of Edinburg headed north – and less than five miles to go to our destination – a very large buck appeared ahead.  We caught sight of him just as he crossed the center line into our lane, I saw how big he was and barely made out the right side of his rack – seeing more than four points. 

What a beautiful buck, I thought to myself, while stepping on the brakes.  It is hunting season and rut is on, so they are on the move.  This guy ended up being a 9-pointer, really in his prime, and confidently strolling across the highway.  We ended up catching him square between the front and rear quarters.

We limped the Equinox off to the side of the road and began taking care of the logistics of the accident – neither one of us were hurt and the air bags didn’t deploy – so we called 911 for assistance and to report everything.  An EMT from the fire department was dispatched, followed by a state trooper.

Meanwhile, the folks in the car behind us had seen the whole thing.  They are hunters, and called a friend to be at the ready to take the deer if he’d survived, which I doubted at the time.  They got permission from the trooper and went to put the buck out of his misery, telling us their plan was to take the meat and donate it to a food pantry.

Eventually the car was towed – a punctured radiator and no headlights had rendered it inoperable.  We’re still in the process of working through the insurance issues, but we did go back and clean out our personal items, and took the tags, as instructed.  

We’ll see where it goes.