The Shiny Stuff @hawksbillbrew

We picked Alpha Brewing Operations for our five barrel brewhouse.  They worked closely with us to review our business plan and expectations for the brewery before specifying a system and sending along a proposal.

Almost as much fun are the frequent emails we get about the status of our order.  The big shiny stuff had to be fabricated, but last Friday we got a status report on it, with photos, showing that the tanks were completed and were being loaded into a shipping container.  It's estimated that they will arrive in Baltimore by mid-November.

From there, they will be transported to the brewery in Luray, where they'll be united with the brewhouse, which will arrive separately by early December.

The three tanks shown here each have different functions:

1) The top photo is a five-barrel fermentation vessel.  It is made of stainless steel, as are all of the vessels I'm writing about today.  This is where the sugars in the wort produced by the brewhouse will be converted by yeast into alcohol.  The conical section at the bottom of the tank allows spent yeast and other suspended materials to settle out of the beer before it moves on to the carbonation process.

2)  The second photo is our five-barrel brite tank.  This is the next stop for the beer after fermentation - it is used to carbonate the beer before serving it.  Although breweries can serve directly from the brite tank, that won't typically be the process at Hawksbill Brewing - we'll move the beer to kegs for this purpose.

3) The final photo is our 10-barrel hot liquor tank.  We'll use a lot of hot water during brewing - specifically for the "strike," the water that will be used to soak the grain in order to extract the sugars, and for the "sparge," essentially a rinsing process that allows us to capture the sugars that will eventually be fermented in the beer.

While our system is designed to produce five barrels at a time, we doubled the size of the hot liquor tank to give us some flexibility.  By heating double the requirement of hot water, we can do two brews in quick succession.  This is part of how we will accommodate seasonal fluctuations in demand, and hopefully any growth we experience in our first year or so of operation.

There's plenty of action to come at the brewery, so be sure and follow our Twitter feeds for updates - the brewery is @hawksbillbrew and these blog posts (among other info) is @cabin_jim.

Equipment Updates @hawksbillbrew

I wasn't lucky enough to be out in Luray last week when David and a few others drove some of our new arrivals down Main Street to the brewery: the fan coil and chiller for our brewing system.  These items had shipped from Oregon and arrived in town late last week.

After a few days' storage it was time to pick them up on the skid steer and move them to the brewery.  They got lucky with the weather, certainly - look at that bluebirdy sky!

So what does all this chilling do for us at Hawksbill Brewing Company?  There's a good reference article on glycol systems here, but to summarize, that coolant is safe for use in food and brewing operations.

This equipment, combined with others in the brewhouse system, will help us get temperatures down as low as 25 degrees in our fermentation systems.
Even more important than the temperature is the ability to automate and precisely control temperatures in the process, since some beer styles require fermentation at lower temperatures and some at higher temperatures.

In any case, now that this equipment is here we can get started on installation, so that it will be ready to connect to our brewhouse and fermentation equipment when those items arrive.

More Construction @hawksbillbrew

Over the last two weeks, much of the project planning has come together, so we are beginning to see an uptick in construction progress.  I thought I'd feature one aspect of that in this first post of the week - I'll have a couple more posts that talk about other progress.

One of the features of the building is this glass block window near the front entry.  I'm not sure if it is original, although it certainly could be: this article suggests the material has been in use since the early 1900's, contemporary with the building's original construction in 1911.    

In any case, this one has seen better days.  Several blocks are broken, maybe just wear and tear, but possibly due to vandalism.  We've decided to simply replace it with a plate glass window, so the team showed up last week to begin demo.

I've asked that some of the materials be saved and put aside for us.  As we continue to find out more history of the building, it may end up being important that we have some of these for reference.  In any case, they do form an important reminder of some of the legacy uses of the place as an ice storage facility and creamery.

Hawksbill Brewing Co. Construction Update

Construction work at Hawksbill Brewing Company is progressing in tandem with everything else that is going on:

• Equipment fabrication
• Financing developments
• Recipe formation
• Social media outreach
• Sponsorships planning
• Interior design

Each one of these could be a blog topic on its own, but since I received the very interesting photo to the right as a message, I'll start from there.

We have three main contracts in place - general construction, electrical, and HVAC/Mechanical/Plumbing.  All three are proceeding in parallel, with David working as general contractor to help keep them from stepping on each other in the building.

Last week, the plumbing really got underway - the core drilling in the photo was one of the essential steps in that part of the project.  The results told us just a little more about the building, basically confirming what we already knew.

The structural report we had let us know that we were dealing with substantial concrete slab construction.  We had six of these core drill holes done last week - and we found depths of 15 to 18 inches.  In one case, the drilling wasn't finished at the end of the day because they needed a longer bit!

Just a repeat of something I've written before about the building.  From what I've been able to discover, it was built in 1911 to house the Luray Ice Company, which supported the Norfolk and Western (now Norfolk Southern) rail line that runs behind the building.  In fact there is still and earthen ramp down into the basement, which may have been part of the logistical arrangements for this operation.

Once there were refrigerated train cars, the ice business closed.  It was soon replaced by the Blue Ridge Creamery, which operated for a few decades.  I've found auction listings for milk bottles from the creamery since I learned about this bit of building history and have included a detail photo from one of the auction sites in the post today.

There's still a ways to go with everything, and I'm sure I'll have more posts to follow.  Stay tuned!

Thoughts on Beer Styles - Hawksbill Brewing Co.

Our team has been working on recipe development while the other aspects of Hawksbill Brewing Company come together.  Kevin and David have come up with a list of four standards, and I thought I might add to my brewing traditions series with a short post on them. 

The four styles are listed below.  True to the current craft brewing tradition, we’re making our own adjustments, both in terms of process and ingredients.  It’s my sense that we are following more of an English brewing tradition on most of our standards, so the definitions below (all are linked to the source page) show those tendencies.

American Cream Ale:  This is a mild, pale, light-bodied ale, made using a warm fermentation (top or bottom fermenting yeast), and cold lagering.  Despite being called an ale, when being judged in competitions it is acceptable for brewers to use lager yeast.

Brown Ale (English Style):  These brown ales range from dryer (Northern English) to sweeter (Southern English) maltiness.  Roast malt tone (chocolate, nutty) may sometimes contribute to the flavor and aroma profile.  Hop bitterness is very low to low, with very little hop flavor and aroma.  Known for rich and advanced flavor without centering too much on hops, this style is extremely sessionable and food-friendly.

American India Pale Ale:  Characterized by floral, fruity, citrus-like, piney or resinous American-variety hop character, this style is all about hop flavor, aroma and bitterness.  This has been the most-entered category at the Great American Beer Festival for more than a decade, and is the top-selling craft beer style in supermarkets and liquor stores across the U.S.

Brown Porter:  No roasted barley or strong burnt/black malt character.  Low to medium malt sweetness, caramel and chocolate is acceptable.  Hop bitterness is medium.  Softer, sweeter, and more caramel-like than a robust porter, with less alcohol and body.  Porters are the precursor style to stouts.

In addition to these four we’ll have rotating selections and seasonals, and sometimes we’ll feature pilot brews of recipes in development.  It’s all part of the craft – and we’re working on it!

A Holiday Weekend Visit to @pendruidbrewing

After writing that post about Farmhouse Ales earlier this week, I got to thinking that it had been a while since I went over to Pen Druid Brewing in Sperryville.  I was at the soft opening in August 2015, post here, and earlier that summer they visited the hop yard, in this post.

So after a few holiday weekend errands I headed over the mountain to check in.  I didn't want to go empty handed and brought along a pound of Cascade hops from Lot 1 of this year's harvest.

I sat at the bar and chose a couple tastes - specifically Space Mothers and Cyclops - while casually talking with Jennings and later Lain (Van was travelling just then) about how things are going.  The clientele was steady, with several pairs and groups at the bar and seated inside and out, so we had some time to chat about their style of craft brewing.

In some of the articles featuring the brewery, and from my own experience working with them on hop yards matters, you can't miss the influence their travels in Europe have had on their approach to craft brewing.  The linkage to Belgian styles is strong, and they've committed a lot of time and effort to developing local ingredients that can be combined in uniquely artisanal brews.  They've even isolated their own yeast strain which categorizes many of the offerings as wild ales.

While I was there I enjoyed three beers:

Space Mothers: this is a biere de miel, or beer with honey, that was created as a joint project with Aslin Brewing.  The ABV comes in at 10.1% for this one, which they called a "hoppy wild."  Nice citrus notes abound.  

Wild Darkstrong:  The malts in this complex dark beer reminded me at first of a brown ale.  The IBUs were much lower, but even though I tried it as my second taste, I could still pick out flavors of chestnut, fig, and raisins.  I could envision sharing a growler of this at a holiday gathering, even though the ABV was still pretty steep at 8.5%.

Venus:  After the first two, I decided to enjoy a third sample and picked this one, a blonde sour at 7.3% ABV.  One of the things Pen Druid is known for so far is their prolific use of wine barrels for aging their beers, and Venus spent 10 months in red wine casks before it was kegged.  There was a slight lambic statement in this beer, which totally rounded out an enjoyable craft beer experience for me.

We talked about the prospects for Hawksbill Hop Yards, and I reported on our results this year: how the Columbus, Chinook, and Fuggles were essentially no shows.  So much so that I've talked with David about plowing them under and expanding to all Cascade (although I really want to see the versatile Fuggles through!).  Jennings insight was that this is how local styles develop - you produce what grows here - and combining that with Virginia grain and Virginia yeast would ultimately result in a good thing.

Reflecting on those thoughts on my drive back to the Valley, I realized that I was pretty lucky to have the opportunity to contribute to our emerging craft beer scene with these hops.  It's worth the investment we're putting in to the hop yard, and the focus we had on processes this year.

The consistency is going to pay off in terms of the character of the beers that will be produced.  The steady hand of craft brewers like Pen Druid will get us there.

Brewing Traditions: Biere de Garde

While all the preparation for opening Hawksbill Brewing Company is rolling along – we’ve had to push our opening back to March due to a few hitches while we await our licenses – I’ve been exploring beer styles to broaden my appreciation for the craft side of what we’re planning to do.  I also picked up a book recently, FarmhouseAles:  Culture and Craftsmanship in theBelgian Tradition, but Phil Markowski, which digs into the beer styles of Belgium and Northern France.

I should say that my study of this topic has been fortified by the discovery of Schlafly’s Biere de Garde offering, which I found at my local, Bethesda Market.  In addition to the excellent deli, they take care to stock an extensive collection of beers.  They’ve contributed in no small part to my beer education – thanks Jay and Sonoo! 

Also contributing to my interest in the style is the creative farmhouse approach that our neighbors at Pen Druid Brewing are taking with their beers.  I’m overdue for a visit (they visited the hop yard last year, and I went to the soft opening), but it’s clear from their social media posts that their exposure to these beers, stemming from years of touring in Europe, led to some aspirations – as Markowski says, “Brewers of this region consider themselves artists, first and foremost, and the vast range of beers reflect this approach.”

The history of Northern France and Belgium is complex and especially tragic due to its central location during the two World Wars.  Someday I’d like to visit and absorb that part of the story in person, but today my plan is to have a look specifically at Northern France’s Biere de Garde; in a future post I’ll circle back for a quick study of the Belgian Saison style. 

Markowski sets up the discussion of biere de garde, to which he dedicates about 20 percent of the book, with the following: “The French have a little-known tradition of beer appreciation.  While they don’t begin to rival the Belgians in the sheer range of flavors and styles, they have a rich beer culture, particularly in the regions of Nord, Pas-de-Calais, and Alsace.”  He goes on to note that in 1905 a British brewer found that there were 1,800 breweries in this region, typically producing less than 3,000 barrels per year, but industrialization of the industry there led to the kind of homogenization that we have experienced in the United States during the 20^th Century.

Right there on the label of the Schlafly version is their tribute to the beers of this region.  The modern style is roughly defined by a deep copper color, balanced hop character, and a higher alcohol content of between six and eight percent by volume.  The term “de garde” refers to provisioning beer for later consumption, which was done by either increasing the hops or alcohol content – my sense of it is that the Belgians went in the direction of more hops, while the French went in the direction of more alcohol, but neither went so far as to compromise the character of their local ingredients.

The book goes briefly into the farmhouse tradition in the region.  These beers were created for sustenance, which is why they have such a robust malt bill; but they also were likely produced with a lower alcohol by volume most of the time, since they were meant to provide refreshment for all of the farm laborers.  Stronger beers were brewed later in the spring brewing season, with the intention of storing them for consumption later.

Thinking about Pen Druid’s commitment to the style, obviously based on their travels, I don’t recall much exposure to biere de garde during my own nearly five years in Europe.  I was in Amsterdam a couple of times, but these country ale styles weren’t prevalent there; also a few weeks at various times in Paris – again, it’s not likely I experienced these beers and we were drinking a lot of French red wine, anyway; and also a weekend in Brussels on the way back from Moscow in the 1990’s.  I probably encountered these beers somewhere in the course of all of that, but simply can’t remember, and thus, I can’t attribute liking them so well to memories.

At this point in the development of Hawksbill Brewing, the goal of research like this is to determine whether it’s feasible to have a go at brewing these beers in Luray.  Markowski says they need four weeks of secondary fermentation and conditioning at temperatures in the 32 – 35-degree range.  Committing one of our four fermenters to this process doesn’t seem economically prudent at this point, but perhaps we can have a go at keg conditioning a batch to see if our customers appreciate the beers.

As an alternative, there is the concept of a biere de Noel (note the page is in French) which adds specialty grains to the process.  It’s fermented more quickly, on a pace that is more typical of the beers we’ll have on standard rotation.  As a fall back, at least we can do something like that seasonally with the style, as we build on our experience and skills. 

Revisiting SNP's Black Rock

Since I first discovered the Black Rock Summit hike in 2009, it has been one of my favorites in Shenandoah National Park.  At about one mile round trip and less than 200 feet of altitude gain, it's one of the easiest hikes I go on - and I've been back there five or six times.  The experience of this summit seems like such a great reward for such little effort expended.

I've written about the hike a number of times for this blog as well:

• First time hiking it here - Back Rock hike
• Digging in for more info here - geology and history

The NPS is observing its centennial this year, and it appears that they have made some enhancements to this hike at the trailhead.  There's an interpretive sign about the AT there now, and there is a little activity guide for kids, describing what they will see on the little hike.


The sign at the trailhead was also updated.  It now includes a substantial description of the geology of the place:


"The exposed rocks of Blackrock formed the seabed of the Iapetus Ocean, an ancient body of water that predates the Appalachian Mountains.  The geological forces that created the mountains changed the seabed into solid quartzite rock. ... Blackrock is still changing.  Weathering has caused what was once a cliff to crumble into a talus slope, a river of moving rock.  Water, ice, and roots break the rocks into even smaller pieces that slide downhill.  Eventually the rocks will have settled enough that plants can grow and Blackrock will look like other forested mountainsides."


The old seabed is in evidence elsewhere in the SNP, but you can also catch a glimpse of it in a number of other places in this region:  Massanutten Mountain's Duncan Knob has a very similar geology, as does Seneca Rocks in West Virginia.  There are also fields with large talus features in the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

For Sunday's trip, I decided not to climb the talus slope to the top.  While I was out for a leg stretcher, I really wanted to try out the panoramic feature on my iPhone, so I was looking for some photo opportunities.  Once I've had a look at those I may post them, but for now I selected three scenic photos - one of the talus slope or "river of moving rock" as NPS called it, a second of the little trail that moves off to the northwest towards Trayfoot mountain, and a third of the main summit and talus slope.

All in all a great day - I can't say enough good things about this particular day hike.

Visiting @sevenarrowsbrew in Waynesboro

It's been a year or two since I was down in Waynesboro, a town I enjoy visiting because that is where the southern entry to Shenandoah National Park is, and there are some really good hikes there in the Park's Southern District.  On Saturday I was running Virginia Craft Brewing errands run, so I passed through on my way back to Luray.  While some of my Waynesboro favorites are Rockfish Gap Outfitter and Scotto's Pizzeria, I've been tracking the opening of Seven Arrows Brewing, and made sure I had the chance to stop in for a visit.

Now, I mentioned the day was spent out on Virginia Craft Brewing errands.  I started out with a drive to Richmond, because Hawksbill Hop Yards had been invited to participate in an all-Virginia beer planned by Stone Brewing's outpost there.  I delivered 15 pounds of our dried Cascade hops to David at Piedmont Hops, who was organizing the hops bill for Stone.  After delivering the hops, I set course for Waynesboro.

A check of Seven Arrows' web site shows that they opened in 2014 - the founders are Melissa and Aaron, who pursued this dream after he achieved a diploma in brewing at Miller-Coors' Shenandoah  Valley operation and she completed an MBA at James Madison.    They’ve written a compelling mission statement:  To uphold superb quality at all levels of production and satisfying all our customers.  Stay aware of the impact of taste, look, and feel of a good beer as well as its cost impact to the market.  Provide value to our customers who are concerned about a quality product that is offered at a reasonable price.

So, after having learned about them during my own market research for Hawksbill Hops, I thought I would stop by on my way through town.  They're in a little office park on the west side, so I pulled in to get a flight after a quick lunch at Scotto's.

They had a generous tap list, covering several styles, and organized around four standards, a seasonal, and seven rotating beers.  I chose a custom flight, and five beers were offered to me based on their IBU ratings:

• Harvested Apple Lager
• Caretaker Kolsch
• Fallen Timbers Oktoberfest
• Ashen White IPA
• Eventide IPA

These days, I do spend a little bit of time savoring a flight, and as I was taking notes about these, the bartender came by to chat about the beers.  I was particularly interested in knowing about their use of local ingredients, and he told me that local hops had been part of the lager I tried.  We also talked about how Seven Arrows is part of the Shenandoah Beer Works Trail, which has a farm to tap promotion this fall.

The beers I tried lived up to the brewery's mission statement - "taste, look, and feel" were solid on these offerings, and from the first presentation I could tell I was looking at good quality.  To my palate, two of the beers really stood out, so I'll highlight them specifically:

Harvested Apple Lager – they make this with cider from the Pacific Northwest.  As I tasted this dry lager, I could detect the apple aromas and a slight flavor of them in the beer.  The IBUs were only 12, so they underscored everything else going on in the beer rather than driving the flavor. 

Ashen White IPA – this beer was hopped less than the standard IPA they have on tap.  The malt bill for this includes wheat, a style that has been growing on me since I visited Boulevard in Kansas City a few years ago.  Overall, my favorite beer of the day.

I was really glad to have made the stop.  These were good beers and it seems like trying a flight there from time to time would introduce new ideas and flavors.  I'll look forward to a future trip!

A Harvest 2016 Update from @maltesebrewing @hawksbillhops

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flight Set-ups for @hawksbillbrew

We've got most of the work set in motion now for Hawksbill Brewing Company:  our construction contractors are lined up, and some have begun their work, with others still to come; the equipment has been ordered and will be delivered installed soon; and finally, our license paperwork is filed and that process is underway.

In the meantime, I have been watching for restaurant closings for opportunities to pick up gently used stuff in good condition that we can use when we open.  We've bought some bar stools from the Alexandria Teaism when they closed, and with mixed feelings, I learned about Hard Times in Clarendon closing last month.

I used to work in that neighborhood, and in fact had a crazy view of Hard Times, seen in this blog post.  I bet that we went there at least once a month for a coney dog, four-way, or even happy hour.  So, I was sad to hear the news.

I did scour rasmus.com to see if there might be something we could use.  We opted out of furniture, and after some discussion with David and Kevin we decided against handwashing sinks and taps - we've arranged for them already and we'd have to store them in the meantime, so it's not likely we'd get much of a savings.

One thing we were interested in and pulled the trigger on were these flight set-ups.  They were in good condition, unopened boxes, and there were 60 of them.  There are not enough glasses for the whole set up, but they are a standard item and will be easy enough to get when we figure out how many we should keep on hand.

It's still a while before we open, but I decided I wanted to try them out with some of the beers I had on hand - you'll see them in the photo with this post.

Maybe it's not much of a progress report, but every little step in the right direction is good.  So we've got that going for us!

Planning Day @hawksbillbrew

We started planning Hawksbill Brewing Company, to be opened in Luray, last winter.  Actually it started back in 2013, but we got serious this year.  Now we have a building, financing for equipment and construction, lawyers and accountants, and a pilot brewing system.  The thing we didn't really have yet is a schedule.

Old school planning day at Hawksbill Brewing.  On the newly
extended bar - we added six feet in a field adjustment.

All those things have taken time - the building needed to be rezoned, and the first bank we worked with discovered that they couldn't make loans for this purpose after we had been working with them a couple of months.  Then there was the paperwork exercise to get the brewery license, an effort that took me a little longer than I would have liked.  But all of that is behind us now.

On Saturday we met at the brewery to gather the information we had about various aspects of the project:  construction timelines, equipment deliveries, and cash flow projections, with the goal of getting them all onto a calendar so that we could begin thinking about when these preliminaries were going to be done so that we could open.  We've been doing this informally up until now, thinking at first maybe we could have it done by August or September (here we are), or maybe December or January.

It turns out that the federal licensing process takes a couple of months, mainly in a review cycle.  So we are being conservative now with our estimates of when that will be completed.  There's good news and bad news associated with what we have figured out.

On the good news side, all of the construction will be completed, and our equipment will be delivered and installed by the time we receive our license.  We'll probably postpone commissioning until we get the license, since during commissioning, our vendor will show us how the system works at that time with hot water and brewing cycles.

The bad news is that with the holidays likely intervening in the license review cycle, we may not have our license until February.  So it's beginning to look like a St. Patrick's Day opening for Hawksbill Brewing.

Momcat Adopts Us

We've had barncats around Hawksbill Cabin since at least 2011.  The lady next door back then told us she had seen a little mother cat with a kitten under our porch one week while we were away.  It turns out that was our first encounter with Momcat. 

Eventually, that neighbor adopted the kitten, and Momcat stayed around the neighborhood.  She generally stayed out of sight back then, until one spring when we drove up to find a litter of four kittens hanging out under the garage extension.

That same summer, Momcat's sister, who was called Foxy by some other neighbors, had also had a little of four kittens, and they were sheltered under the pool deck.  

Now, all these cats and kittens were very cute, but ten cats is a good start on 200, so we decided to try and do something about it.  Mary research a non-profit in Harrisonburg. Cats' Cradle, that was helping with spaying and neutering feral cats, so we had them out to take care of the two moms, and as many of the babies that had survived.

Eventually we adopted Sashie from Momcat's litter - we tried to adopt Momcat, too, but she was a holdout.  We've had a good friendship since then, she greats us whenever we're out, and she even hangs out on the brick terrace with us.  Plus, she loves to take walks with Tessie up and down the road.

Momcat disappeared for a while back in 2014, when we went away on our vacation to Mendocino.  We were prepared for the worst at that point, but she survived, maybe picking up at one of the other houses in the neighborhood.  Eventually she came back to Hawksbill Cabin that winter and has been around ever since. 

During the winter storm last year we were worried about the cat, and asked Dan and Sally to come down to check on her.  Everything was okay, but we decided we'd try and convince her to move inside this year.  After all, she's had a remarkably long life for an outdoor cat, and she has been a good companion and friend to us all these years, why not adopt her?

We took it easy, getting her some worm meds and flea oil over the course of the summer, and feeding her indoors from time to time.  But this weekend was the breakthrough - she came indoors and stayed to hang out for a while - even deciding to stay inside over night.  She finally has adopted us.  

The deal I had with Mary was if she gets a cat, I get a farm.  Now we have three barncats now, and Tessie, the honorary canine.  I guess I wasn't a very good bargainer.

Hops Results - 2016 - @hawksbillhops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farm-to-Table with Page County Grown

This year's Page County Grown farm-to-table dinner was on August 13 at the Mimslyn Inn - we've been hunkered down with the hops harvest and I didn't get to post about it yet.  In fact as I write this I'm about to head over to the farm to do some more packing, but first I'll get caught up on the dinner today.

Mary and I have been attending the dinner since 2011 - although that first year she stayed home because of a storm.  It's really one of the center pieces of the summer social season out here in the Valley - an opportunity to enjoy a well-prepared dinner, shared with friends, in a pretty wonderful setting.  I look forward to it every year.

When it was first organized, Page County Grown coupled the dinner event with a farm tour.  However, for the last few years, the tour has been scheduled to coincide with the Page County Century bicycle ride.  Last year Hawksbill Hop Yards partnered with Public House Produce at David and Heather's farm to form a stop on the tour.

 
So that's a brief history of the event, now back to the dinner.  This year, chef Chris put together a five course dinner, shown on the menu to the right.  After a cocktail hour the diners all made their way to circa '31, the Mimslyn's upstairs dining room.

Each of the courses includes a locally-sourced ingredient and we are fortunate to have a couple of proteins available.  Lamb was featured in the first course, prepared in a terrine.  It was an eye-opening preparation for me - I'll grill lamb when the mood strikes, and Mary has some wonderful recipes for roasts - I guess I'm always surprised by some alternative approach that comes together for this dinner.

Course two was the eggplant and green tomato stack - done up with panko and a corn relish.  It made for a nice vegetable pause in the festivities, and preceded what is one of my favorites - the pasta course.


This year's pasta course did not disappoint by a long shot.  It was a sweet corn ravioli - I've got a photo of it below.

Last year the restaurant in my office building featured a sweet corn ravioli lunch plate during the summer.  Alas, that chef left and the special did not return this summer.  I really enjoyed that one and had it a couple of times.




Everyone at my table liked chef Chris's version - I think this was the quietest moment of the evening while we all dug in.

There is traditionally a palate cleanser between these warm-up courses and the main course.  This year, that was a frozen concoction made of local berries.  Now we were set up for the braised beef - featuring a roast from Skyline Premium Meats - and our friends the Burners.

For a couple of years running there was a barbeque contest in Page County, and I was one of Jared Burner's pit crew.  So just before the main course rolled out I went over to talk with Jared about the potential of getting our team back together for some competitions in the future.  We still might - but that will take a little planning, so it was back to the dinner.

The roast was simply top notch, and plate had all the complements you might expect with a beef dish.  Another quiet moment at our table while we enjoyed the course.

And finally, desert, which again featured local berries, this time plump, juicy blackberries.

One of the things that sets this event off for me is that the meal includes wine pairings from Wisteria, our neighbors Sue and Moussa in the Valley.  We had tastings of the Chardonnay, Seyval, Viognier, Petit Verdot, and Velvet - this last a rose blend.  Everything hit the mark in this well coordinated presentation.

Personally, I asked for a refill on the Petit Verdot, due to my great thirst.

As the evening came to an end, Mary and I found ourselves a little sad that the 2016 version had come to an end.  We'd simply run out of courses this time.  Even so, we knew that we had the 2017 event to look forward to - you can bet we'll be back!

Drying and Packing @hawksbillhops

A few Cascade cones from Lot 2.

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

More to follow!

The Harvest Begins @hawksbillhops

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

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


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


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

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

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


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


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

Stay tuned!

Second Dry Mass Test @hawksbillhops

David inspected the lupulin in this Cascade cone.

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

Half of the sample for this dry mass test.

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






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


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

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

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

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

Stonyman in Summer

Mary's cousin was down for a visit for a week or so, and after a few days in Alexandria we headed to the Valley for the weekend.  It's summer, so there's a spate of outdoors activities scheduled for any given Saturday and Sunday - of course we took those in.

At the end of her stay there was one thing left on the to-do list and we decided to go up into Shenandoah National Park to take in some views and to enjoy the cooler temps at altitude.  We chose the interpretive trail at Stonyman, a 1.5 mile loop with about 350 feet of elevation gain.

That qualifies it as an easy day hike, certainly, but this remains one of my favorites, and I have done it some dozen times, in all seasons.

Even though it was Sunday, the trail was not crowded as it can get.  We weren't the only folks at the main summit, so after a few minutes there we walked down the horse trail to the other outcropping, and we had that spot to ourselves.

I took this photo looking northwest out onto the Valley below, Luray is just visible in the mid-ground, with Massanutten Mountain behind.

With the hike behind us, we headed back to Hawksbill Cabin for some lunch and then it was back to the city - and ultimately our trip to NYC, which I posted about last week.

@hawksbillhops Preparing for the Hops Harvest - Dry Matter Test

Here are the raw hops in the dehydrator.

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

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

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

Calculation notes - our hops are not ready to pick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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