Visiting Pale Fire Brewing ( @palefirebrewing )

My flight at Pale Fire!

Knowing that our strings and w-clips were on the way for the hop yard, I went on a shopping trip down to Harrisonburg to pick up some additional supplies at Home Depot.  Since Harrisonburg downtown is home to four breweries, I decided to make a side trip to one of them - Pale Fire, which quite a few of my Luray friends have visited and recommended since it opened last year.  I was not disappointed!

The brewery is set in a adaptive re-use development in downtown proper, just across the street from the farmers market.  It's an old industrial facility of some sort, and they've set up some of the old pumps and machines around as art and interpretive elements of the old site.  There's a nice circular drive up into the property that I assume can accommodate a food truck or two when needed.

I grabbed a seat at the bar and began to check out the offerings, eventually deciding on a flight of five 4 ounce pours.  I was soon to learn that the name Pale Fire comes from the Nabokov novel of the same name (I'll have to reacquaint myself with the author, which I read often during my enlistment as a Russian linguist).  On tap were some interesting choices, and I settled on two Belgian styles, two pale ales, and a stout.

The Belgians - Saving Grace and To Hell w/ Good Intentions - were good, both made with the same yeast strain.  Saving Grace is Pale Fire's take on a traditional farm house Saison, and I'd like to have a taste of it again someday when I'm taking a break from weeding the hop yard.  The other one, To Hell w/ Good Intentions, was a collaboration with Adroit Theory Brewing in Purcellville, highlighting another Belgian tradition, using fresh adjuncts - blueberries and Thai Basil, in this case.

The stout, Lucille, was a good beer, but what I really enjoyed was the two Pale Ales, a style that has been growing on me for the last couple of years since I found a stray six-pack of 21st Amendment's Down to Earth at Bethesda Market.  Both of the Pale Fire versions were good, but Razor's Edge, a Rye Pale Ale, carried the day, in my opinion.

While I was enjoying the beers, which were accompanied by excellent write-ups, I took the time to smell the beers deeply.  I wanted to get some insight on the hops they used, since I grow a few of the varieties in evidence here.

One of the owners was sitting nearby and noticed my activities, so we struck up a conversation.  I told him I was growing hops and he was encouraging - only they have a 40 barrel brew kitchen.  I asked for advice about how a nascent grower like Hawksbill Hop Yards could potentially supply a brewery their size.

First of all, they require pelletized hops for consistency.  It's a fact that none of the current Virginia growers can supply a brewer at this scale consistently - even at full production our one- and two-acre farms could only deliver enough hops for a few batches!

However, it may be possible to support a Virginia hops harvest ale, using freshly picked, whole cone hops.  At 40 barrels, we estimated that Pale Fire would require about 120 pounds.  I expect to have that much in Cascade this year, but that would be almost the entire crop!  I offered to track how our plants do this year and check in again in July, when I make a final estimate of what the harvest will look like.

I was really glad to find the time on my hands to make this stop.  As an aspiring grower, I got some great insights to the process for supplying a brewery operating at this scale.  We'll have to work on coming up to speed in a few years, and come back around to see if we can make something happen.

Ready for Stringing @hawksbillhops

The Cascades will climb themselves
if there's no string around.

With Spring Planting out of the way, the rains came back to the Valley.  There were a couple of days of sunshine mixed in, and that was all it took for the Cascade bines to take off.


Of all the varieties we have at Hawksbill Hop Yards, this one, developed as an American variety in the Pacific Northwest, is most suited to the Virginia climate.  It does very well here, as the photos show.  The bines are practically climbing themselves while they are waiting for us to tie them in.

Here's about 1,000 coir strings.

We took a little different approach this year, and ordered supplies as a co-op.  I went in with three other growers for my strings, and in the process saved a good 50% of the cost over last year.  While it meant a little more coordination and getting them a week or two later, the savings are worth it and we'll probably do it again next year.

The product we use is coir strings - made from Sri Lankan coconut husk fibers.  You can get them in several formats, but the ones we get are pre-cut to a length of 20 feet, 6 inches.  Our lines are 16 feet, so there is a little extra room for tying them and then a couple of feet of extra twine on the ground afterwards.

We'll start to work on this during the next week or so, first soaking the strings to soften them up so they untangle easily, and then taking them over to the yard so they can be tied and anchored.

More updates on that to follow, of course!

Spring Planting 2016 @hawksbillhops

Here's a section of the new Fuggles half row.

We had our spring planting event at the hop yard on the last Saturday in April.  It had been a wet, rainy week, but the weather broke just in time for planting.


Unlike last year, when we were just starting up the farm and had to plant all 700 rhizomes, this year we had planned to do some fill-ins.  We added a row of 60 Chinook, so that we have three now - about about 180 plants.


Also, because they were slow starters last year, we had considered taking out the half row Centennials and putting in a row of Fuggles in their place.  The Centennials were up and at 'em this year, 27 plants, so we decided to plant the balance of that row with Fuggles, so now we have about 85 of those along with the Centennial.  There is a 12 foot space between the two varieties in that row so that we can ensure we don't mix them up during the season, when they can intertwine at the top cable across that distance, or during harvest.

One of the Goldings hills after weeding.

We also added some fills in our Cascade rows, patching about 25 empty spaces where plants didn't come up this spring.


The second major undertaking was to weed the Goldings.  These are an English variety that I'd really like to see have a go, but they seem ill-suited for the Virginia climate.  When I scouted the row - we had planted 50 of them last year, I only spotted 25 or so of them.

There are a couple of our volunteers who are especially dedicated to these plants - they planted the rhizomes last year and checked on their progress several times throughout the season - and they happily jumped right into the task of weeding them.  In the process, they found the rest of the Goldings - so we're up to 50.  Time will tell if they can make it with all the competition from Virginia weeds, and the challenges of Virginia daylight hours being shorter than their native England!

Once the field chores were done everyone took a break
under the pole barn.

All in all we had about 15 folks come out to help, and like last year they made pretty quick work out of planting the rhizomes and the weeding.  At the end, everyone spread out into the yard and freelanced on more weeding.  We pretty much cleaned up the Cascades, leaving the Chinooks and Columbuses for later this spring.

Of course we had Luray's famous donuts from the Fairview Grocery for refreshments.  We also had some homebrews to share - one made with hops from our yard, and two others that included hops that Kevin grew in Luray.

The help from the volunteers is so valuable and important to our little start-up hop yard.  This work will go a long way towards helping us get to a viable harvest this year - especially with the new rows and the Goldings!  I'm really looking forward to the growing season now!

Cabin Lore - the Hawksbill Cannery

I see these colorful can labels around the county from time to time.  There are a couple of them, on cans and in frames, at the Hawksbill Diner in Stanley, and this weekend I found these two examples in Gathering Grounds in Luray.

The Gathering Grounds piece has a few of the tokens and chits that were issued by the cannery, I guess to workers and others.  There was an auction last year for a token printed with 4 cents on it - these items date from the late 1800's into the early 1900's.

So that inspired me to do a little research to see what I could learn about it, and off to Google I went.

As with the building on Zerkel Street where we hope to operate the brewery soon, the first things that came up in my search were trade publications.  The cannery was listed as a hotels supply vendor in the one I found, dated 1922.

There are a couple of photos in the "Luray and Page County Revisited" book by Dan Vaughn.  The author has included a photograph of the cannery under construction in 1906, located on North Hawksbill Street in Luray.  It was called Luray Canning Company at that time.  The business was renamed Hawksbill Cannery after I.N.Dovel bought it in 1914.

A subsequent photo shows well drilling for a proposed but failed expansion in Stanley.  Apparently there was a fire in 1950, but it was rebuilt by Dovel's son and by 1954 was one of the leading canners of watercress - that's one of the labels that they have at the Hawksbill Diner.

In any case, I have always like the color and graphical style of these labels.  I'm on the lookout for some.  And we're going to use them for inspiration in the brewery logo - we'll have to see what the designer comes up with on that one!

The Building Permit @hawksbillbrew

Since my day trip to the Valley on brewery business, we have keep the ball rolling on things.  The meeting with the bank two weeks ago went well, but unfortunately the types of support we needed from them did not match their charter or business model.

The good news out of that experience was feedback on our business plan, which led to some polish and refinements.  Then we were able to network to two other local banks, both of whom are very interested in the project.  Now we are tracking them and working to have the meetings and complete the paperwork they require - hopefully we'll get all of this done in the first couple of weeks of May.

Meanwhile, after all the work on rezoning, and chasing down some documentation, David was able to get our building permit.  Although we've had it a couple of weeks, we didn't want to put it up until we had signed the lease...and now that's happened too.

So while things may be moving a little more slowly than we would like, they are headed in the right direction.  Progress is good.

Another IPA Brewed with @hawksbillhops

Still working with the new half-barrel brewing system that will eventually become the pilot system for Hawksbill Brewing, the team experimented with an IPA a few weekends back.  This one was on the heels of an English Brown Ale and a Coffee Porter, so with two brews down we were hoping that we would finally have the groove down with the work flow.

Kevin had researched a recipe that would use the kinds of hops we are likely to have available locally - which from the farm at Hawksbill Hop Yards will be Cascade, Chinook, Columbus, Fuggles, and Goldings, and with any luck, maybe some Centennial this year.  As it turned out, there were still two pounds left from last year's Cascades, so we used most of one of them in this brew - they were combined with a share of Fuggles that Kevin had left from his crop.

Equal measures of the two hop varieties in two additions, followed by an aroma addition at flame out that was all Citra pellets - we don't grow that variety so it was the exception to our strategy of using local hops for this.  In the future, if we start pelletizing the Hawksbill Hop Yard crop, we can use some of the Cascade for this purpose.

David tells us that fermentation is nearly complete on this one, and he's already sampled it.  There's a burst of aroma from the pour, and he was pleased at the intensity of the IPA taste afterwards.  Sounds like we are on to something - we'll need a couple of IPAs in the repertoire when the brewery gets up and running.

And it won't be long before I have a chance to sample it as well - I have some work to do in the hop yard this weekend, and I may come around for some refreshments.

Visiting Swover Creek Farm Brewery

On Thursday I found myself out in the Valley on brewery and hops business – I’d scheduled a meeting in Winchester but it was moved to Woodstock.  From Winchester I had planned to visit my friend Jonathan up in Lucketts Mill, but I canceled that due to the longer drive after Woodstock.  Instead, I took a drive over to Swover Creek Farm Brewery.

The last time I went to Woodstock, I didn’t make it.  Mary was with me and we were on the way to the new Woodstock Brew House, but we hit a buck that totaled the car.  We hadn’t ventured back since then, although I’d still like to go check out the brewery.

Over the last few years as I have gotten involved with the hop yard and now that we are beginning to plan the brewery, I met the proprietors of Swover Creek.  They have a hop yard on the property and were early members of the Old Dominion Hops Co-op, and they eventually moved forward opening a farm brewery on the property.  It’s a pretty inspiring story that matches my aspirations.

With time on my hands, I checked both Woodstock and Swover Creek and found that Woodstock wasn’t open until 4pm, but Swover Creek opened at noon, so I decided to take the drive out to Swover Creek.  This neck of the woods also has a favorite vineyard of ours, North Mountain, which I written about before – and they are growing hops as well, but whenever I am there, I remind myself that the big mountain to the west is North Mountain, and that’s West Virginia.  It’s close enough that you could almost reach out and touch it.

Once I got there, I ordered a flight, highlighted by the Red Clay IPA and the Coffee Stout (on Nitro!).  There were a couple of locals in the tap room, so I struck up a conversation with a few of them (I was in my farm shirt with the logo, which I have found opens doors in the industry).  They were useful contacts that I hope to have a chance to talk with further.

Proprietor Lynn was in the tap room and offered a brewery tour, which I gleefully took advantage of – they also shared some farm-made andouille sausage and zucchini relish that I couldn’t resist.  I learned their story of starting with a half-barrel system and growing to the current 3.5-barrel system that fills the brew kitchen – the story is on their web site, which is linked above.  Obviously, there was a lot of perspective to be gained to an aspiring brewery operator!

I took away some good lessons from the visit and shared them with my partners at Hawksbill Brewing, David and Kevin.  Very helpful insights that are going to help us stay on track as we continue to make our own progress on this journey!

Now back to the tasting - so far I've found that every one of the Virginia breweries I visited have at least one memorable offering, and Swover Creek was no exception.  The Red Clay IPA came highly recommended by the brewtender, and I was not disappointed.  But an even more pleasant surprise awaited with the Coffee Stout (on Nitro!) - it's a style that is trending right now, and I am quite fond of it, but also there is this technique of using nitrogen gas during tapping.

I'll do some research for a future post, but it is said that using Nitro was pioneered by Guinness (who doesn't love a Guinness?) but we are finding it used more and more by craft brewers in Virginia and nationally.  Heck, we're even using it during our pilot brews - by coincidence we just did a Coffee Porter pilot and put a 5-gallon keg on nitro! 

All in all, I had a lucky day.  My business meetings went well, and time will tell if they were successful.  But the real luck came because the meeting moved and I had some found time - and I had an opportunity to meet some great people at an up-and-coming farm brewery!

The Bees Have a Good View

On Sunday I decided that Tessie and I should drive over to Hawksbill Hop Yards and scout for progress on the bines.  While it's early in the season - May 14 is the frost free date in the Valley - I wanted to see how things were going.  And since the dog was along, we took a walk out into the other fields at Public House Produce once the scouting trip was over.


Just across the little drainage from the hop yards is an "idle" field - at least it appears that way.  But at the produce farm this field has two key purposes - one, it's a key forage area for the bees that will be busy pollinating the crops later in the season, and two, it's a food patch that serves to keep some of the deer at bay from the other crops.

With the proliferation of the varmints, you could argue whether or not it's a success in that second role, but as far as the first goes, I think the bees are happy.


David has a cover crop in right now that will serve to nourish the bees in the early going.  As Tessie and I walked along I noticed the incredible view of Stonyman Mountain in Shenandoah National Park just over there in the distance, so I had to stop for a moment to admire it.


Then as we turned to walk back to the hops, I went to have a look at the apiary.  It was too cold for much activity in the hives, so I was able to get close.  I had to cajole Tess a bit to keep her away from the electric fence, fortunately this was a listening day for her and she didn't get a "life lesson."

But that could happen some day - I wouldn't bet against it.

Shakedown Batch 2 - The Coffee Porter

Since I wasn’t able to participate in the first pilot brew, I made plans to be there for the second.  The planned recipe was a coffee porter – the idea of combining cold-brewed coffee with porters and stouts is very popular these days, and I’ve found some good ones in the offering commercially from Sierra Nevada and Schlafly.  So it’s a natural conclusion to want to have one of these on the rotation eventually.

When I arrived, the team was working on the mash.

When I arrived, the team had already brought the hot liquor tank up to temperature and the grain was milled.  As before, in true shakedown style, there were some hitches in the process – true learning experiences that I see as an investment of time and effort to build skills.

The situations reminded me of my first terrified homebrewing experience when I graduated from one gallon batches to five gallon batches.  I’d made all of this investment in the equipment and the recipe kit – and when I went to do a check on fermentation about a teaspoon of my sanitation solution spilled in the beer.

Sanitation is the key to good beer, so it’s not unusual to have a solution around all the time while doing chores in the brewery.  I use a food grade product that offers the convenience of no rinse application, so after I checked the label to see if this small dilution would be okay in a five-gallon batch, I relaxed a little.

Eventually I called a friend about it though, and he reminded me that people have been brewing for 5,000 years, and sanitation hasn’t even been a science that long.  You can imagine brewers in the dark ages using malt that had been ransacked by rodents, animals crawling around in it, maybe feces dropping in there…so here I was worried that I might have a little sani-solution mixed in to my brew.

 

A side chore for the day was to move the Brown Barn Ale -
the "extra special bitter" - into a keg.

That conversation ended with the comment, “Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew!” So flash forward a few years and here we are going through the steps of a shakedown on the pilot system – my sense of it was we should experience the whole thing and learn how to operate as a team.

Since the cooler needed to be set for some hop yard supplies
(lower than fermentation temps) the coffee porter is going
to ferment in the garage.

So when I arrived, the guys were in the middle of figuring out some wort flow issues with the mash and the hoses and pumps – eventually diagnosed that the grain had been milled too finely.  The fix was to do a few of the steps manually, and during implementation that meant we got a longer protein rest at a lower temperature than the recipe called for…at the end of all of this we still had an O.G. that will yield a session alcohol by volume level.

Plus, it will be a coffee porter.  You know, the flavor of a beer like that is the key, not so much the ABV – so we’re looking forward to what’s likely to be a good thing!

The Shakedown Brew

The pilot system gleaming in the sun
of an early spring morning.

While the brewery is still in developmental stages and the licensing process is underway, we cannot brew beer and we certainly cannot sell it.  Meanwhile we still have some work to do on getting recipes together and perfecting all the steps needed to make beer, so we bought a pilot half-barrel brewing system and shopped it out to a local home brewer for all these shake down activities.

The malt for the first pilot brew.

After unboxing and assembling the system a few weeks ago, there was a lot of preparation for the first brew.  A brown ale was selected, and since it was brewed in a barn, the name for it was Brown Barn Ale. 

Local Fuggles and Cascade hops were used,
provided by one of the neighbors.

In true shakedown style, the grain was milled and then went into the mash tun.  The brewing process flowed from there – pumps and hoses and plate chillers and all.  At the end of it, the beer went into the fermenter at a good pitching temperature – just about 70 degrees. 

The fermentation process was carefully monitored over the course of about two weeks.  A northern English ale yeast was chosen for fermentation on this, but some recipe substitutions had to be made on the hops bill. 

Pitching the northern English ale yeast.

The product ends up just a little more bitter than what you might expect for a brown ale, so our brewing team promoted it – it’s now an extra special bitter. 

True to form in brewing, where you might find your taste tends more towards aroma hops than bitter hops, this will appeal to some but not all.  But it is still very drinkable and I’m sure that every drop will be consumed as the recipe development and equipment shakedown processes continue.

And the best part is it was our first one, made on the pilot system that eventually will become part of the brewery.

Revisiting the La Belle Discotheque Bombing

April 5 is an important day in American history - mainly because it is the anniversary of MLK's assassination.  That happened when I was a youngster, and although I was too young to understand the man's significance when it happened, his impact was clear as I grew up.  After all, the neighborhood I moved to in Washington, DC in 1992 still bore the scars of the unrest that happened after his death 26 years earlier in 1968.

On a more personal note, April 5 is the day before the anniversary of my USAF enlistment in 1980, and my discharge six years later, in 1986.  On that Sunday morning in 1986, I boarded a flight from Berlin's Tegel airport and out-processed the next day, April 6, at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

In 2012, I wrote about the La Belle Discotheque bombing in a post linked here - the whole chronology of my evening on April 5 is there, along with a brief description of the events afterwards.

Going forward to 2016, I chanced to read a post about the bombing on Facebook (my 2012 post was also inspired by a friend's post on Facebook).  This time, I was amazed to see the author of the post - Abdul - who was one of the guys I encountered at the base NCO club that evening.  He and his friends had said they were on their way to La Belle and invited us along.

So here we are, 30 years later, and I was finally hearing the rest of his story - they were en route to the club when the blast happened, and arrived there shortly after.  I had heard over the years that he or some of the friends he went with were injured, but that wasn't true either. Abdul's post about the disco concludes with the following quote:

"Thanking God we didn't make it there during the explosion but we were enroute to this club the night they blew it up. Prayers and blessing to those who were in there especially the Army soldier whose life was tragically taken too soon. We had some great times inside Club LaBelle."

I'm so glad and relieved to hear this news all these years later.

(note:  After I posted this, I learned that there were a few USAF guys who were injured in the bombing - but none that I knew personally.  Several other friends were either there or on their way, so I guess the event could have had an even bigger impact on my circles.  Still, it's worthwhile to take a moment to think about those injured from this criminal act.  I hope they are having good lives despite the tragedy,)

Backyard Hops - 2016 edition @hawksbillhops

After watching neighbor Dan in his hopyard down the road from Hawksbill Cabin, I got interested in trying to grow them for myself - I also started brewing at around the same time, and eventually used the hops I was growing in the backyard in some of my beers.


It all started with this Willamette, which is in a five gallon pot along the fence in the back.  The plant is three years old now, and I am sure there are roots that spread out deep and wide from the pot.  It would take a lot of work to move it, in other words - but I may do that next year.




There are quite a few other "home growers" out in the Luray area, and this year I got to know Kevin a little better.  He's always been fond of Fuggles, which he uses for some very tasty porters and stouts.  His plants are thriving, and they are mature - seven years old, in fact.

Because he championed Fuggles so strongly, it was one of the varieties that I chose to plant in the commercial hopyard we started last year.  In fact, this year, we're going to add a second row of Fuggles, for a total of 120 crowns.  We'll need to pull out the 20 or so hills of Centennials - I hope to salvage those in some temporary pots and use them in the future when we expand.

My plan on Sunday was to get out in the yard and trim back all those shoots from the Willamette.  Some of them are already four feet long, and they are nearly ready to grab on to the fence and climb! I'll have to prevent that!

Meanwhile, Kevin told me he got out to clean up the the Fuggles row.  He sent me this photo after he thinned the rhizomes - he estimated a half bushel of them.  We're going to get together for a look at them soon.  I may be able to use a few of them for fills in my original row.

It reminds me that I need to get out for a look at Dan's hopyard soon, too.  I bet that there's some action in his backyard as well!

Shipping Off to Baltimore - #nfmt16

Looking over my past posts I thought I had written about the NFMT conference in Baltimore more frequently.  I have been presenting there every year consistently since 2007, although I was sick in 2008 and didn't go.

My scan of posts shows that although I've written about the sister shows in Las Vegas and Orlando more recently, I haven't posted about the Baltimore show since 2010!  So I'm overdue for an update.


I ended up in the facilities management field after I completed my MBA at USC in 1997.  When I got back to DC from LA, they had a management consulting practice focusing on this specialty just starting up at what was then known as Sverdrup (subsequently bought by Jacobs), and I was the third employee to join it.


Here we are, nearly 20 years later, and it turns out that my work with 80+ clients has revealed some inscrutable truths about how organizations run their real estate and facilities - and this discovery convinced me that maybe I should talk about some of the things I've learned in the field.

So, in 2007, I put together a talk about prioritizing facilities investments, and presented it at NFMT in Baltimore.  Then, in 2009, I gave a new talk about high-performing facilities organizations in Baltimore and Las Vegas - I also gave the prioritization talk in Vegas that year.

Every year since then, except for 2014, I have presented at Baltimore, and in alternating odd-numbered years, I've given my talks in Vegas or Orlando.  In 2014, while I didn't present, the company put a booth up at the Baltimore show, so I did attend - I hate the idea of missing it, truth be told!

The topics continue to evolve.  After the high-performance talk had run its course, I made up a new one called "Building a Better Business Case" - once again, featuring how to make good investment decisions about facilities, but adding the key concept of how to justify funding requests to management.  This year was another new topic, although the title is no where near as catchy:  "An Overview of Facilities Management."

A few of my team members joined me in Baltimore this time, and I was very happy to run into some current and former students from the graduate program I teach in at Catholic University.  Since this was a new topic, I didn't know how the audience would receive it, but it ended up that there were more than 180 attendees in the room!

So we'll call that a success!  I already have some updates for this talk to keep it fresh a year or two, and I'll see if I can take it to Vegas this year.

Some might say that facilities management isn't a glamorous field.  I beg to differ.

Brewery Lore and Loose Ends @hawksbillbrew

Along with everything else going on right now as we continue to develop the brewery, a few weeks ago we discovered a hitch in the zoning for the building.  I’m not altogether clear on how or why the problem was discovered – but it sheds some interesting background on the building, so I thought I might revisit the topic

.

What we know so far about the building is that it was built in the 19-teens to be an ice storage facility for the railroad, which passes alongside to the west to this day.  When refrigeration came along, that business faded away, and the next one to occupy the building was the “Blue Ridge Creamery” – sometimes you can find bottles and such from them on eBay – and I’ve found a few folks around town who remember the creamery.

Following that was a string of retail establishments, including an auto parts store that was there for a long time, and many people remember.  Since Mary and I have been coming to Luray, we’ve known the building as an appliance store and as the scooter store, which was the most recent iteration.

Flash forward to 2016, and as we were going through permitting and licensing activities, we discovered that the building was in the industrial zone of town – probably as a legacy to those earlier uses.  During almost 50 years of use for retail, the zoning was never changed to commercial.  It became necessary to clarify the zoning, and working with the Luray Fire Department, our landlord, we decided to seek the zoning change.

This is a regulated process, requiring meetings with the Planning Board and the Town Council, along with advanced notice in the paper and even a site visit – I have a copy of that post here as a photo.  When all was said and done, the rezoning was approved – but we had a lot of in person support at the meetings, and quite a few letters were sent in.  

That inspired the following Facebook post, which I wanted to share on the blog:

We had so much support for our meetings with the planning commission and town council today - it was both humbling and exciting. Thanks so much to everyone who came out and spoke or wrote a letter today on our behalf. There is a little bit of a road ahead - but we are looking forward to it. It's going to be a fun ride.

One of the fun comments on Facebook was an article about characteristics that identify successful towns – and the presence of craft breweries was one of the features.  Here’s the link, and the quote is below:

Having craft breweries. This might seem like the strangest attribute, but the researchers say a town that has a craft brewery has a certain kind of entrepreneur spirit and is a reliable marker of a city on the move.

We certainly hope to have that kind of a positive impact!  

The Pilot System Part 2 - @hawksbillbrew

Since receiving the pilot system two weeks ago, David and Kevin have kept busy inspecting and assembling the components.  They completed this task over the weekend and moved the system out to the barn, where the power was correct for operating the system.  

In the first photo here, the tower, the kettles, and the hot liquor tank are shown as they will be set up during brewing. Also, the controller is installed with the system plugged in.

Everything's pretty much ready to go - they need some additional hoses and connections to complete the job before the guest home brewer will brew the first batch, but that time is coming. The selected recipe is a red ale.

As I understand the schedule, there'll be a practice run with hot water, a cleaning, and after that the first brew - sometime over the next two weeks or so.  I hope to be there for it.

The storage solution for everything when it is not in use is to lock it away nearby.  It makes for a shiny display, as seen in the second photo!

Our plan for the fermentation phase is to use the walk in fridge - there's a cool bot control there so that we can monitor and manage fermentation temps - should work well.

I'll have a post for the pilot batch whenever it's completed - hopefully I'll be there to see that in person!

The Pilot System Part 1 @hawksbillbrew

There are a lot of irons in the fire these days.  In addition to finishing up the lease and some of our LLC formation documents, Hawksbill Brewing has engaged our licensing consultant, we've got a design for the brew house, and we're working on getting our construction effort underway.

Over the last month or so we decided to begin working on testing recipes, so Kevin designed a pilot brewing system that could be used informally for this purpose - it arrived last week and the team got together to assemble it over a couple of weekends.

It is a half-barrel system, so it is designed to brew 15.5 gallons per batch.  We chose an electric system, and since the power we need for it is available in David's barn, that's where it will spend most of its time.

One of our key assumptions on this system was that it should be modular, and work well within the ultimate brewery when we are in operation.

That's the reason we picked electric, but it is also the reason we selected a conical fermenter.  It even has a coil inside of it so that we can use it with the glycol system we'll be installing in the fermentation area of the brewery.

There's a tower with electric controls to go with all of this hardware - so we'll be able to precisely manage mash termperatures and boil times.  There's a pump and plate chiller to go with it all.

While I wasn't out there to help with final assembly, it didn't slow the team down.  Honestly, I know I'm not much help on this part.  But I look good in team photographs.

Next weekend we'll be putting the system to the test.  First with a water cycle to make sure everything is hooked up correctly.

If that goes well, the first batch will follow on Saturday.  I don't know what the fellows have in mind for that - but I'm looking forward to it!

Tree Trimming in the Hollow - with @svec_coop

A few weeks ago, our local power company came through to clear some trees along the right of way in the back, behind the cabin.  They've been working for a while on this project and our neighborhood's turn finally came - only the crews were interrupted by the big snow that happened last month.

They came back today to clean up all the downed branches and trees that had been removed.  So right now I'm getting serenaded with safety beepers and chippers. (Just like at work!)

Beaver Run cuts through here, so there is a steep little valley that makes it interesting with these vehicles, but as the one photo shows, that is not stopping them.

Earlier I took a walk out there to check everything out - it struck me that my little yard is only part of the whole county, and their effort has been going on for some time.  It's quite the industry.

Then one of the guys said that they actually used helicopters up in here to take down the branches that were too close to the lines.  I was sorry I missed that - had no idea.



I decided to look it up online though - and I found a good explanation video on YouTube that I have embedded below.  Pretty good show - I still wish I could have seen it in person!

Early Spring @hawksbillhops

Look closely for little pink buds on this Columbus.

On Sunday, as a spring rain was starting to move in, I took an hour to walk around the hop yard to scout.  I had a brief moment in the sun on Saturday while I was walking Tessie in the field, and I found a Columbus bine that had begun to bud, accompanied by some little leaves.

Since it is so early - two or three weeks, at least - I thought no problem, we've just got a high-achiever out here.  Then I started seeing Facebook posts by growers in Ohio and Kentucky saying their yards are starting about two weeks early, so I clearly needed to take a walk around.

What I found in the field was prolific leafing and budding - not every hill mind you, but at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the hills.  On every variety but the Goldings, so I have Cascades, Fuggles, Chinook, and Columbus already greening out.  I'm happy for the vigor, but we still have a lot of work to do in the field before we're ready for growing season!  Our supplies haven't even arrived!

I've lost track of the photos - this is probably Cascade.

It's not just the early sprouting that I found so amazing - I found that our Cascades are going gangbusters and are reaching out into the drive aisles.  I found clusters of leaves four feet out into the rows!

Our part of the Shenandoah Valley isn't past the frost stage until May 14, David tells me, so these little plants have a bit of a struggle ahead.   We still have a few weed control steps to take, although we're going to have to change our plans to reduce the stress in the yard.

Plus we have work to do on preventing mildew.  It's simply too early for this.

We are proceeding with plans for our spring planting event despite this.  We're set for April 30, and this year we'll be adding rows of Chinook and Fuggles.  The Fuggles row is going to be fun, because we have to take out 25 Centennials first.

And also because it is fun to say Fuggles.



 

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.