Checking in on Bill's Cascades

On Saturday morning I took Tessie out for a ride, and while we were doing some errands we decided we might stop by to see our friends Bill and Rhonda on Main Street.  They are restoring two houses down there, and one of them is among Luray's oldest homes.  The second has come far enough along, with wonderful modern features like radiant floor heat, so that is now their comfortable residence.


A few years back, Bill got some Cascade rhizomes from neighbor Dan, and planted them along a trellis in a sunny spot in the backyard.  The bines have thrived back there - his set up is just about perfect with the sunny spot, the 8-feet of climb, and an elevated garden.



They've become something of a bell weather for Hawksbill  Hop Yards, since they're usually ready a few weeks before us, due to the microclimate in that neighborhood.

Bill's plot o' hops was one of the final inspirations for the decision to bring Hawksbill Hop Yards to life - harvesting those hops in 2014 (see the post) on a perfect day sealed the deal.  The photo on the left  is of him and John picking the Cascades (stylized with the Tangled app - it's also one of my favorites from the thousands I've taken with the iPhone).

Since then, I partnered with David and we started the farm, and of course that whole adventure is yet to run its course!  Still, one step at a time, and the hops harvest is nearly upon us, as indicated by Bill's Cascades.

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.

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!

Virginia's Own Hardywood Park Craft Brewery

As long as I am on the topic of Virginia-grown hops, I thought I might post about Hardywood Park brewery down in Richmond.  I first noticed these beers at the Whole Foods here in Alexandria back in 2013 or so, but now I can also get them at Trader Joes (and if I looked hard enough, they're likely in some of the Giants or Safeways, and maybe even Harris Teeters).

The story of this brewery, which is located in the historic German brewing district in Richmond, makes for a good tale, and it can be found on their web page.  I've tried several varieties, and I keep buying it not only because I like the beer, but because really like the 25 oz. bottle size that I can recycle for my home brews.

This weekend I picked up the RVA IPA - which is an annual release of theirs.  Here's where the connection to Virginia-grown hops comes in:  they use volunteer-grown hops from the Richmond area.  Here's the description from their site:

"...we reached out to Richmond's very passionate beer community to invite home hop growers to donate some of their fresh harvest. Sure enough, they came through. With fresh hop contributions from local home growers, Hardywood RVA IPA captures the terroir of Richmond and the spirit of its hop growing beer enthusiasts. A wet-hopped, American-style India Pale Ale with loads of fresh local Columbus, Cascade, Chinook, Centennial and Glacier hops, Hardywood RVA IPA displays a toasted auburn color with a vibrant, creamy head."

So even though I didn't contribute hops to this effort - after all, Hawksbill Hop Yards is intended to be a commercial farm, I did picked up a bottle to enjoy on Saturday night.  And of course, adding to my personal enjoyment was the fact that I poured it into one of the logo glasses from the farm.

Cheers Hardywood, maybe sometime in the future we can collaborate with Hawksbill Hops.  

Catching Up - Dan's Hops

A view from the east side, the oldest
plants are here.

There are a couple of hop yards that I credit for inspiring us to start Hawksbill Hop Yards - Bill's, which I posted about last week, and Dan's, which I visited on Saturday and will post about today.  Sometimes, I even refer to them as "pilots" because I learned a lot about the plants from these guys.

I first came across Dan's hop yards back in 2009 or so, maybe sooner, but it was when he was just getting started.  There were a dozen or so hills of three or so varieties, and he hadn't quite figured out the trellis.

The makeshift trellis, an additional
10 feet, extends from the lower right.

Flash forward to 2015, and there are more than two dozen hills of five varieties, and the trellis is continually improving.  It's ten feet tall and built of found objects, such as recycled plumbing pipes, and cedar poles that come from the 2-acre wood lot he's got back there.  This year he added some drip irrigation as well.

Production has been consistent all these years, so he always has ingredients for his home brewing operation.  This year, all of his plant except for the first year ones have cones.  It's a sign of progress that some which hadn't borne before are doing so this year.

There were a couple of case studies from the visit - by the way, afterwards we enjoyed a fantastic ribs dinner from the grill.

First, Dan has had a couple of Goldings plants in his garden for a few years now, but this is the first year that they have set cones.  I made a point of selecting this variety at Hawksbill Hop Yards, and I've received a lot of comments about them not working out well.   After seeing how his are doing, my takeaway is that we'll have to be patient with them - that row of 60 Goldings may need a full three years to mature, so that's just how it will have to be.

The second takeaway is something we've learned about the Willamettes - Dan's had these in the garden forever, using them as decorative plants.  They never set cones until this year, when he transplanted them to a new spot, and added more support to them so they could climb higher than the trellis.  He put a rope up they could climb to a neighboring tree branch so they can climb to 20 feet...and guess what, these plants are laden with huge cones.

They'll be a challenge to harvest, but they'll be a great variety to experiment with as he brews his batches over the winter!

Catching Up - Bill's Hops

There were three "pilot" hops projects that I encountered or worked with before I started Hawksbill Hop Yards in Luray - first, Dan's yard in Stanley; second, my own plants in the backyard in Alexandria; and third, Bill's hops in Luray.  Yesterday Bill sent me the amazing photo here as an update on how his six Cascade bines are doing.

I posted last year about the harvest, here, and then I brewed two batches of a "Harvest Black IPA" with the hops - posts here and here.

They are second-year plants, mounted on a trellis in his backyard, and get good day-long sun from the south.  They have about 8-feet of run to the top of the set-up there, and they bridge across on support lines when they reach the top of the structure.  He's had great success with them, and as the photo shows, they've already set cones - they look ready for harvest!

I hope to be able to stop by to check them out this coming weekend.  In the meantime, I better brush off that IPA recipe!

May Check-in - Backyard Hops

For the last six weeks or so I have been very focused on all the activities involved with getting Hawksbill Hop Yards up and running - from working with David to select the site, get it cleared, build the trellis, etc., all the way through training the bines.  I'll have an update on Hawksbill Hop Yards next week, but for today I wanted to check back in on the three bines I have in the backyard in Alexandria.

These plants served as a pilot of sorts, combined with the experiences neighbor Dan and fellow "home gamers" Kevin and Bill have going on.  Learning from them inspired me to try growing hops myself - and eventually led me down the path of starting a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley.

I have two varieties here - a Willamette and two Goldings bines.  The Goldings have struggled in Alexandria, in part because I moved them and they needed to re-establish themselves.

The first series of three photos above is the Willamette.  This plant is thriving - it is growing out of a five-gallon pot, but it has sent a feeder root out into the garden.  Because of that, I can't move it, and because it is in a spot where there is a power line overhead, I can't put up much of a trellis for it.

Instead, I'm treating it as a decorative plant, and it is taking over our fence.  It's even climbing the Leyland Cypress.  It's determined to find a way to get the altitude it needs, and there are already little burrs on it everywhere.

The Willamette is a variety that used to be very popular, but that has faded in recent years with the advent of high-alpha varieties.  Meanwhile, the Goldings is a variety that I am more interested in using for my home brewing, and things are looking good for it now, in its second year of re-establishment.  There's another not in frame here, but it isn't doing quite as well, possibly because it gets less sun.

The Goldings has a trellis, and it can climb as high as 10 feet on the set-up I provided.  I expect a small harvest this year, and if I get that, I may brew a small "harvest" porter off of it using the fresh hops.  I'll need a pound of fresh hops off it for that - we'll see.

My next check-in on these bines will be around the equinox, which is when the plants will typically cease their vertical growth and start pushing out sideways branches, followed by flowering...even though the Willamette is not following that timeline!

The Backyard Willamette

Two weeks ago, in this post, I was just beginning to consider how my backyard hops were faring.  I have a potted Willamette, which is the subject of photos today and in that previous post, as well as two potted Goldings.

While the Goldings are in a spot that doesn't get good sun until just about now, the Willamette is further out in the yard and the shade from the house retreats early.  So there is early growth from that plant, which happens to be three years old - it should be in full yield mode this harvest.

Last year we got a couple of ounces of fresh hops from it - the trellis situation is not optimal since we have a fairly low power line nearby, and I don't let it grow over seven feet - hops optimally want to get above 15 feet or so, but we just can't do it here.  The Goldings are in a spot where I can grow them to ten feet.

I pruned the Willamette back to just five or six of those shoots on Sunday afternoon, and I strung some jute twine for it to begin climbing.  I fell like it's too early to be at this stage already, but the plant is doing really well and I'm going to let it run.  The plant will grow vertically until the summer equinox, and then it will begin pushing out side branches before it flowers.

The three potted hops plants were part of my pilot for the Hawksbill Hop Yards venture - one of three experiments with growing that have resulted in the project out in Luray.  Now we're up to 800 plants there...with a plan to go to 1,600 next year.  Maybe we bit off more than we can chew - sometimes I wonder!

Alternative Styles of Hop Yards

In one of the communities I follow over on Google+, I came across this photo of a hop yard in New Jersey.  My connection Brad (this is his photo) was highlighting the addition of two new poles, for a total of six poles, which are surrounded by a circle of 15 plants each.

The land is on a hillside, part of a county-owned farm there.  Brad says they are growing Cascade, Chinook, Nugget, and Mt. Hood, although there may be one more variety in the mix.  Most of the production will go to brewing club members.

When we were first conceptualizing Hawksbill Hop Yards, we considered this traditional arrangement of the plants.  You can get pretty good density with this approach, which would allow you to get to commercial production levels.  However, once we started having a look at the scale we were going for - a full acre with expansion to a second acre, this arrangement didn't work anymore, since it would make laying the irrigation system difficult, and operating machines in there would be a challenge.

The other system we looked at, but didn't adopt, is the in-line system shown in the photo of a model one of the vendors brought to the hops conference in North Carolina last month.  Neighbor Dan also uses this type of system in his hop yard, supporting his Beaver Run Brewery operation.  This approach simplifies the irrigation and equipment problems, but it is costly if you don't have a ready and cheap supply of poles - because you are using poles on every row to support the trellis cables.  

Our system, which I'll be showing off soon - we're digging holes for the poles right now- is a matrix, with poles every four rows.  The system is stabilized through the combination of lengthwise and crosswise cables that are all anchored on the exterior.

In any of these arrangements, despite the challenges each presents, a hops farmer can get densities of up to 1,000 plants per acre.  We're planting Hawksbill Hop Yards on a less dense approach, since we're in a learning stage and don't want to add stress to the plants.

I could be convinced to put in a couple of central pole set-ups, but they would be for non-production plants.  We could use them for rhizome cultivation, educational outreach, or ceremonially.  I like the looks of it, so I'll keep it in mind.

My Hops Mentor

For frequent readers, there's no secret about my main inspiration for starting Hawksbill Hop Yards:  my neighbor Dan's small hop yard that supplies his "Beaver Run Brewery" endeavor.  Dan keeps between 20 and 30 plants up there - and he has seven or eight varieties.

Part of his property includes a two-acre forest of cedars that grow straight and tall, which are the source of some of his poles.  The lines are strung at 10 feet so he can reach them with a ladder, and since many of these plants are more than five years old, they yield quite well.  By the end of May, they'll have reached the top of the trellis

While Mary and I were at the vineyard on Saturday, Dan texted that he was working out in the hop yard cleaning up and stringing for this year's growing season.  I stopped by on Sunday to have a look - everything is neat and clean, and many of the hills are already sprouting growth.  This one here has some sprouts that look ready to take off, even though it is only April.

Looks like it will be a solid year for him and Beaver Run Brewery!

Here and There Hops

David texted the other night with an update on progress at Hawksbill Hop Yards - most of the materials for the trellis has been ordered, and the field is now staked to mark out where the installation will happen.  We'll take a look at everything this weekend to check it out.

On that account, the poles have arrived at the co-op and they're being stored on the trailer, so all that has to be done is to go pick them up.  We're waiting for the other supplies to arrive to consolidated trips.

Also, with spring arriving, I am keeping an eye on the three "crowns" I have in my backyard in Alexandria - two Goldings and a Willamette.  The photo here is the Willamette - you can see a half dozen or more little red shoots coming up on this plant, which is now getting started on its third year.

Both of the Goldings plants also have shoots, but not nearly so many.  They are in a shadier spot in the backyard so they'll just run a little later.

One of the Goldings is also three years old, but was damaged during transplanting last year so it didn't do very well - hopefully it has recovered this year.  The other plant was in its first year last year, so this will be the year to see good bine growth and maybe some cones.

Everything needs fertilizer - the soil probably needs a pH treatment as well.  I'll get right on that.

Another Great Brew Day at Beaver Run Brewery

It's been a two-year project for the Blue Ridge Brewers Association to develop a local source of malted barley for our home brewed ales - a project with legs, which if successful, could develop the source into a commercial product.

This year, working with a local farmer and a facility that could malt the grain down in Nelson County, a total of nearly 700 pounds was harvested and prepared for brewing.  Last week Dan drove down to Nelson County to pick it up, and he told me he was going to brew with it this weekend.  So I made plans to join him out in the brew-barn for part of the day.

As usual, I checked out the "on tap" board to know what I would be sampling during the work at hand.  Both offerings were great, but the Honey Brown Ale was unique in that it used some 25-year old honey Dan had in the basement.  The honey originated in Washington state, where his dad had a hive that foraged in a blackberry bramble.

They're calling the new malt 6-row Thoroughbred and I'll see if I can learn more about it in the future.  On brew day, Dan had planned a 10 gallon batch of IPA, and he had milled 20 pounds of malt for that effort, matched up with a selection of hops from the backyard hop yard.

I had an important errand to run during the middle of the brew, so I had my obligatory samples and helped stir the mash before checking out for a couple of hours.  Dan was using a step-mash approach to fully bring out the fermentables.  The effort involves a couple of pauses where the mash rests at temperature to ensure that its productivity is maximized.

When I got back to the brewery, the boil was just getting underway.  We walked through the hop additions - five of them, shown in order in the photo below.  All of the hops used in this brew were grown on the property - so between the well-supplied water, hops, and Luray-grown barley, this was a mostly local product.

I suppose the brew club will need to get to work on developing a local yeast strain now.  When they do, we'll have all of the major ingredients underway locally in Page County.

Our friends at Wisteria ferment one of their varieties with the yeast that comes in with the grapes from the field - so we know it's possible.  And I've heard rumors that at least one member is working on it.  In any case, there is a strain that has been isolated down in Richmond - we could brew with that one and have a Virginia-centric product, progressing gradually to our goal of a beer produced entirely from Page County ingredients!




Moving on to the true brew nerd portion of the post - Dan pulled samples of the wort as it progressed through the mash, all the way up until he started the boil.  We tasted each of them, from the sticky sweet, oatmeal flavored first pull through to the light amber of the final bit.

He measured gravity after the boil, before pitching the yeast, and it read 1.060.  Assuming the fermentation progresses normally, the target is 6.3% ABV.  Calculated IBU measurement is 64.

Ready in five weeks, I guess!

Sunday Brew Chores

Dryhopping the Honey Porter with
frozen Willamette hops.

It's atypical for me to have more than one batch of beer going at any given time, but these days I am in a hurry to use my fresh hops. I remain very worried about how they are stored - I didn't have time to oast them, so I simply froze them fresh.  They are very perishable, so I am worried about the impact to them from this unusual handling - there is a photo below.

I have fresh hops from a couple of sources this year - there is the harvest that Bill gave me, which consists of six batches' worth of Cascades, and there is the small amount of Willamettes that Mary picked from our backyard plant.  

I've been using the Cascades in a series of Black IPA brews, as I've posted in the "Brewing with Fresh Cascades" series.  My plan was to dryhop my latest batch of Honey Porter with the Willamettes.

Here's how the Willamettes looked
coming out of the freezer.  I had to use
them quickly!

The two batches going on right now are a Honey Porter, which is one of my go-to brews, and the Black Widow IPA, which is the recipe I have been using with the frozen Cascades hops.  On Sunday, the Honey Porter had been in primary for just about two weeks, and the Black Widow had been in primary for a week.  My chore was to move them both into secondary.

It's not a difficult process - but process is the key word here.  There is a ton of sanitizing that has to be done, and then careful siphoning between carboys.  A key step is taking a sample to measure fermentation progress - this is done with a thermometer and hydrometer - and record-keeping.

For the Honey Porter batch, since fermentation had progressed pretty far already, I will probably only leave it in secondary for a few days.  The Black Widow will stay in for about two weeks before I bottle it, which is the next step, in fact, washing and sanitizing bottles is another one of the chores I'll be doing today.

The brew record for the current batch
of Black Widow IPA - sitting at about
7.10% ABV on 10/18.

This is the record for the Honey Porter
batch - it's at 5.78% ABV.

Closing the post, here are photos of my records for the two batches, showing both the brew cycle and progress through Sunday.  At bottling time, a final measurement of gravity and temperature takes place, and the I calculate the estimated alcohol by volume, or ABV, for each batch.

Brewing with Fresh Cascades - Chapter 2

When brewing with "leaf" hops I use poly muslin bags to minimize the
need to filter stray flowers in later stages of brewing.

They say home brewers are creative, and I guess that’s why I consider each batch of beer that I brew with the Cascade hops Bill grew in his backyard an experiment.  The theory is only confirmed by a conversation I had with Dan recently after he told me he planned to use some honey that his dad collected in Alaska and stored years ago in a brown ale.  That batch will be all grain – pretty advanced stuff – in addition to crafty…I’m looking forward to a sample.

Meanwhile, my investigations are moving in parallel, focused on perfecting a couple of different brews so that I can experiment with different hops to see what I get.  So far, I’m on my third batch of Black IPA – which I’ve named the Black Widow series:  

1. Black Widow IPA #1 – this was brewed according to the Northern Brewer recipe, including Magnum, Chinook, and Centennial hops, then dry hopped with some of Bills Cascade from last year’s crop;
2.  Black Widow IPA #2 – this was the first batch I brewed with the fresh hops we picked at Bill’s place in August (check out the links at the end of this post), which is dry hopped in secondary with packaged Cascades; and



Here's the first pour of Black Widow IPA #2.

3. Black Widow IPA #3 – this batch was a weekend project just brewed on Sunday, and currently in primary – the recipe is the same but the difference between batch 2 and batch 3 will be the storage time I had the fresh hops frozen, as I used the hops in batch 2 within three weeks of picking them and in batch 3 about two months afterwards.

Batch 2 has been in conditioned the bottle long enough that I tasted it over the weekend. These batches are fresh hop brews, which reminds me of the efforts by the Old Dominion Hops Co-op to establish a hops industry in Virginia.  Those guys recommend starting small, and since the harvest doesn’t yet have the scale to merit some post-harvest processing, the focus is on selling the fresh hops to local brewers who will use them right away in a seasonal brew.

These are the spent hops from Black Widow IPA #3.

Here’s a quote from an article earlier this year in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"While brewers want to be supportive of the local product, quality and price are business considerations. Hops straight from the bines, or “wet hops,” must be used quickly — a good thing in capturing flavor and aroma for special brews. But for year-round beers, pellet hops purchased in bulk with analysis of acids and oils go a long way toward ensuring consistency and control costs."

I guess the Black Widow series is my own small-scale experiment with the concept. 

Here are links to those earlier posts about Bill’s hops.

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2014/08/brewing-with-fresh-cascades.html

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2014/08/sunday-hops-picking-in-luray.html 

A Brewery Visit - on Business!

The whole reason for my day trip out to Hawksbill Cabin last week was to continue my market research about growing hops in Virginia.  While our history with hops is not as strong as it is elsewhere, like New York on the east coast, and the Pacific Coast from Northern California up to Washington State in the west, there is a growing craft brewing industry that has created an interest in domestic growers.

My association with Dan and Bill, and the rest of the Blue Ridge Brewers Association, introduced me to the hobby of growing hops on a small scale to support home brewing. Gradually I've learned about the Old Dominion Hops Co-operative, and it was my plan to go to one of their outreach events at Corcoran Brewery in Purcellville in the evening after running errands with David in the morning.

That's not a bad thing, having a business meeting in a brewery - especially if the topic is focused on growing a key ingredient - hops!

I also took advantage of being at a brewery to take some photos, and experiment with a new app I have on the phone - so the brewery photos here are the results of that little diversion.

While I've done some significant market research about growing hops, I've been looking forward to meeting with the co-op to learn more.  Evaluating the feasibility of establishing a farm to source hops for local breweries is a key goal of mine, so I had hoped to collect a bit more information from this session - and I did.

The facilitator was Stan, who founded the co-op.  He covered the basics of growing hops - I still have some unanswered questions in this department, but he covered everything he could in the session, which was aimed at a broader population, and maybe not so much me.

Two breweries were there - the host, Corcoran, and Lost Rhino - both of whom buy fresh hops from the local farmers when the harvest comes in.

I spent some time studying the beer offerings at Corcoran, intending to sample a few.  Unfortunately they were out of the Black IPA, but they had a back-up IPA with the name "Hops the Bunny" - apparently alludes to a rodent who used to frequent their old location.  I enjoyed the beer enough to have a second one.

To sum up my takeaways from the event - they'd be a good understanding of what it takes to set up a hop yard, an understanding of the annual cycle for the farm (from planting to marketing), and an introduction to the local hops market as it is evolving in Virginia.  All good info for my next step...whatever that will be!

Food for Thought - re: Local Hops

Doing a little web research recently about Virginia brewing.  Between the Brewers Association website and my own recollection, I was trying to name off, out of the 61 Virginia craft breweries, how many of them are near (within a two hours’ drive) Hawksbill Cabin.  Here’s what I came up with:

·         Harrisonburg:  Three Brothers, Three Notched

·         Lexington:  Devil’s Backbone Outpost, Blue Lab

·         Lynchburg:  Jefferson Street, Apocalypse

·         Front Royal:  Backroom

·         Purcellville:  Corcoran, Adroit Theory

·         Leesburg:  Crooked Run, Barnhouse

·         Ashburn:  Lost Rhino

This list has the makings of a year-long day-trip fest to taste beers in breweries, especially if you add in several breweries to the east that you would encounter as you drove back towards (or out from) Washington, DC, including Old Busthead in Vint Hill (Manassas area), Bad Wolf in Manassas, Mad Fox in Falls Church, and Port City in Alexandria.  Last year I exchanged emails with a few of these about where they get their hops – I also talked to two larger brewers in the Tidewater area. 

Also from the Brewers Association website, there was news that about 130,000 barrels of craft beer are produced annually in Virginia.  The selection of breweries I highlighted range in size from nano, producing less than 5,000 barrels annually, to regional, producing more than 15,000 barrels per year, but they probably add up to about one-quarter of the craft beer produced in Virginia, or approximately 32,500 barrels. 

It’s just a point of interest to me at this point, but thinking about Dan’s (and Bill's - shown here) hop yard, and the other hop yards that are springing up throughout the state, I wanted to take this review to the next step of calculating how much hops this level of brewery production required.  Here’s what I came up with:

·         Approximate (dried) hops per barrel:  1.5 pounds

·         Total (dried) hops needed for 32,500 barrels:  48,750 pounds

·         Estimated (dried) hops produced by known Virginia hop yards:  14,000 pounds

None of the hop yards that I am familiar with actually dry their hops for commercial sales – that is a level of investment in machinery they haven’t made yet.  Instead, they sell their fresh hops into the market place, and we get some very good seasonal “harvest” beers, best consumed fresh, and only available in limited quantities for a very short time.  Fresh hops contain a lot of water, and are typically dried in an oasting process that reduces their mass by 80 percent. 

What would happen in this market if a hop yard were to come on the market with the capability to produce high quality dried hops – either whole or in pellets?  There certainly appears to be room for the product on the demand size, since these craft breweries identified survive and prosper without local hops, acquiring them instead from large, national distributers, such as Brewers Supply Group, Fresh Hops, and Hops Union.   

I guess I’ll have to leave the question as a rhetorical one for now.  But it is definitely food for thought.

Last 2014 Post from the Alexandria Hop Yard

Willamette hops.

One last post updating the hops I grew in the yard in Alexandria.  The Goldings bines - one new and one that is a year old, never amounted to much this year, and it seemed to be a recovery year for them.

On the other hand, my Willamette bine thrived.  It was in the same place that the Goldings had been last year, so that is something to think about.  Also, because I can't have a trellis there higher than eight feet, due to overhead power lines, there will never quite be the proliferation off of a plant in that location.

I'll spend the winter deciding what to do about the experiment...perhaps I will keep the two Goldings bines in their current location, where I can have a ten-foot trellis, and move the Willamette out to Luray and put it next to the shed, so it can grow over eight feet.

So while I move to the next stage of hop farming, I'll close this posts with a short description of the two hops varieties.

Kent Golding - designating the original Golding is no easier than sorting our the origins of the variety...even East Kent differs from Kent and certainly from American grown.  Most importantly, it tastes of English beer.  Very good storage.

Willamette - the most grown American aroma hop until AB InBev cut back commitment in 2008.  An alternative to Fuggle released in 1976, with a mild, spicy profile.  Versatile, its flavor works well with many styles.  Fair storage.

(Paraphrased from:

Brewing with Fresh Cascades

The second 2 oz. hop application, top, and
the 1 oz. aroma batch.

A few weeks back I wrote about our afternoon of picking the hops neighbor Bill had grown in his backyard.  (The post is here if you'd like to check it out:  http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2014/08/sunday-hops-picking-in-luray.html).  Last Friday I broke some of them out to brew an IPA with.

I've adapted the recipe from a Black IPA kit I got (I have one batch that was completed faithfully to the kit recipe just going into bottles - with the exception that I dry hopped it with some of Bill's last year crop).  In this case, I used a 5-to-1 substitution ratio of the fresh hops to the dry hops the recipe called for - I used Dan's ratios to calculate the rate for that, since he told me that drying them reduces them to around 20 percent.

The aroma hops went in at the end of the boil.

I went with two bittering dosages of 2 oz. each, one at the start of the 60-minute boil and the second at 30-minutes.  Plus I put in a final 1 oz. for arome at five minutes before the end of the boil.  I plan to dry hop with a package of Cascade pellets, since that doesn't increase IBUs and this will probably be on solid ground in that department.

The beer will be in primary for another week, then I will transfer it to secondary for two weeks.  I'll also let it bottle condition for two weeks before drinking it.

I Grew a Hop - 2014 edition

Last week, when I wrote about Dan's hops, I had all but given up on the plants I have in the backyard at Alexandria.  In fact, I wrote of the season as a loss at the time and I wasn't planning to give any more updates on the Alexandria hops.

That all changed earlier in the week after Mary came in from checking on the tomatoes and told me that I had some hops on the Willamette bines.  This plant grew robustly this year, but since nobody seems to have any luck with the variety, I just assumed I had a decorative plant here.  But to my surprise, there are little green cones all over it now.

Not enough to make a batch of beer, but enough to maybe dry hop some future batch with.  I'll keep an eye on them and harvest them soon, probably within the next week.

In contrast, the Goldings are having a recovery year.  I've diagnosed the situation as a hazard of transplanting - I set them back to the first year level.  So next year I should see them come back into production.

Sunday Hops Picking in Luray

A great big Cascade cone.

A few weeks ago Mary and I went to visit our friend Bill in Luray.  He and his wife host happy hours out in the yard while the music plays down at the plaza on Friday nights, and we were lucky enough to be out for one of those summer evenings.

Bill planted some hop rhizomes in the backyard last year, all Cascades from Dan - this is their second year and the bines are really producing for him.  He was at the bicycle race on Saturday and told me he was planning to pick on Sunday if I wanted to come by.  So I did.

It turned out that another friend from the neighborhood, John, was there to help as well.  I figured we could make it quick with three hands working.  They had chosen a Lagunitas offering as the official refreshment, so - so much the better!

We packaged the fresh hops in 14 one
gallon freezer bags.

John and Bill instructing me on how
to pick hops.

We picked the cones directly from the bines for a half hour, then I asked Bill if he expected another harvest this year, or if this was going to be the only one.  He said just this once, so we decided to cut the bines down and pick them while sitting around a table - the work went quickly then, to the sound of good tunes and tall tales.

Tragedy struck when we ran out of Lagunitas, but these resourceful guys had a fallback, and we finished the job with Yuengling.

With some of Bill's harvest from last year I made a batch of "Tax Day IPA" - there are still a few bottles left.  The first year Cascades delivered a beer that is right on the threshold on IBUs for an IPA - around 55.  Bill still had a few ounces of those left, and he offered them to me - I will use them to dry hop a Black IPA that is just about ready to go to secondary fermentation.

We picked enough hops to fill 14 one-gallon freezer bags.  I might not be handling these correctly, but I've put them all directly into the freezer.  I just ordered the ingredients for two more five-gallon batches of Black IPA, and plan to wet hop those with part of this crop.  I estimate I'll need six ounces of fresh/frozen hops for every one ounce of dried or pelletized hops called for in the recipe.

In the meantime, there will be 15 gallons of beer laying around, all made with local hops!