Growing Your Own: Fresh Hop Brewing

The hops, after a disappointing (but expected) first year with no blossoms, flourished this year and produced a bumper crop.  So I finally got a chance yesterday to brew my very own fresh hop ale with my very own (organic!) hops.  The problem is, of course, that I have no experience using fresh hops and the whole endeavor is pretty new, so there is not a lot of collective wisdom out there about the use of fresh hops.

Nevertheless, I forged ahead.  I am a huge fan of fresh hop ales, but I also know how hard they are to make well.  Most fresh hop festivals have as many failures as triumphs.  One thing I have settled on is that dry hops should be used for the bitter charge.  There are some who would argue that this then makes the beer not a true fresh hop ale, but I disagree.  The point of the fresh hops is not the bitterness but the green earthy note they impart to the beer.  And bad beer is bad beer, so using the very hard to anticipate fresh hops as the bitter charge increases the risk of a bad beer significantly.  In fact, I am confident that my beer will be quite enjoyable no matter what I have been able to extract from the fresh hops.

 I decided on a very simple recipe - a light colored pale ale (no, not a redundancy) hopped exclusively with Cascades, both dry and wet.  My brewing compatriot came over at 10 and we began the harvest of the hops at 10:30 while the strike water was heating up and by 10:45 we mashed in and continued to pick the hops.  Just for kicks I threw a couple of handfuls of wet hops in the mash at vorlauf for some wet hop first wort hopping.  Then the dried Cascades at the beginning of the the boil with a big bunch of wet hops at the end.  Having no idea how much to add I just grabbed handfuls and dumped until satisfied.  Something about that lack of precision - in a process defined by precision -  seemed fitting to the whole fresh hop beer ideal.  All went well and the beer is now fermenting happily. 

It'll be interesting to see how long the beer will last.  We will have five gallons of the stuff and I expect the fresh hop note to be ephemeral - I wonder how long it will take for the beer to either lose its character or become stale and unpleasant.  Those with experience are encouraged to chime in to prevent me from wasting beer.   

The whole endeavor feels very Portland to me - backyard hops cultivating, home-brewing, and making a northwest pale ale.  It was also a very cool experience regardless of the outcome.   

Growing Your Own - the Final Hop Update

Well fresh hop season is upon us, time for the wonderfully fecund crop of volatile beers - good and bad - made from fresh (as opposed to dried) hops. I have only had Oakshire's so far, so I gotta get moving. But my dream of making my own from my home-grown hops has been shattered by my failings as a horticulturalist. My problem stems from my assumption that any growing vine must be
as hearty as a weed and thus not in need of any special attention. Ur...no.

My real problem was poor soil and so after growing quickly to about a foot, it just stopped. I was patient, but eventually realized it was a failure to thrive and needing of nutrients. Massive doses of compost restarted it and obsessive watering and tending got it moving but too late. It has now stalled out at about 8 feet and no flowers.

The picture above is my best attempt at pretending it is a towering plant. I was told not to expect much of a harvest the first year, but I had hoped for some flowers. Alas.

Speaking of growing your own, I finally had a Chatoe Rogue Single Malt Ale made entirely of Rogue's own home-grown barley and hops.  As it only uses one type of malt and one type of hops I didn't expect much - brewers love to blend lots of ingredients generally.  But I was surprised to find that it was a delightful beer: simple, straightforward and very quaffable.  I highly recommend it both as a pean to the local food movement, but also as a great beer in its own right.  And Rogue apparently knows a lot more about growing hops than do I.

As far as fresh hop ales go, I am looking forward to trying Rogues, as well as the standard setting Full Sail Lupulin and Double Mountains Killer Green.

If you want to know where to find fresh hop beers in Portland, use Bill's Fresh Hop Map and contribute when you find an undiscovered one.  

Growing Your Own - the Hop Update

Well, I never claimed to have a green thumb...  My initial rhizome didn't seem to want to emerge from the earth and greet the sun, so I had to declare a failure to thrive and make an emergency dash to Portland Nursery to get a new Cascade hop plant (which apparently is the hop of choice as the pickings were slim among Cascades, but there were ample choices of very mature hops of different varieties).  Now, after taking quite a bit more care with the planting, giving it lots of fresh soil and compost, I am happy to report that my new Cascade hop is thriving albeit still a wee thing (picture above - now about a week old, so it has grown probably 2-3" since then).  My cherry tree also looks to be gearing up for a banner year so beers with home grown ingredients are in the offing.

One side benefit to having to dash off to Portland Nursery is that I pass right by Belmont Station - a misnomer now that it is on Stark, but no matter - and, well, when in the neighborhood one must stop in mustn't one?  Since spring was in the air and hops were on the mind, I picked up a selection of IPAs that are hard to find in my local stores:

Oakshire Watershed IPA - A lovely hop aroma, amber color and medium body. A bit aggressively bitter, but another of the excellent NW IPAs out there for us hop heads.

Hair of the Dog Blue Dot - As a seasonal, it is only around part of the year, so now is the time to track this über-classic down.  Every time I try this after a long absence I am absolutely floored by it.  It is aggressively hopped but has a wonderful creamy body that balances the bitter hops.  It is much lighter than the average NW IPA and I suspect that a dose of wheat gives it its creamy body.   The hops and malt do a dance on your tongue and the floral aroma sings to your nose - rhapsodic.

Rogue Brutal Bitter - My favorite Rogue beer which apparently is being renamed Rogue Brutal IPA.  It is really not a bitter in the british sense as it has more IPA characteristics, but it is not especially bitter so I have always thought that the name did it a disservice.  As I can find about 10 other Rogue beers locally but not this one, I suspect that I am right about the name scaring people off.  Of the four beers here, this surely is the one a non-hop head would be the most likely to love.  The Crystal hops are so clean and bright on the palate it amazes me that they are not used more (at least to my knowledge). I tried to clone this beer with a few twists and it came off pretty well and now Crystals are among my favorite hops to brew with.

Bear Republic Racer 5 - This was the true revelation.  I had not had it before and I have missed out.  It is bottle conditioned (like Bridgport's IPA) which allows the flavors to shine and oh what flavor!  It is aggressively hopped by not aggressively bitter, has a wonderful aroma, floral and citrusy, a lovely amber color and is lightly carbonated thanks to the bottle conditioning. It has vaulted into the top shelf of my favorite IPAs - which includes those listed here as well as Ninkasi, HotD, and Boundary Bay, among a few others.  

I highly recommend all four.

Tomorrow I shall update the latest news on the eagerly anticipated arrival of The Hopopotamus™

Brewing it Yourself and Growing Your Own

Over a year ago I mused about whether brewing your own beer was a cost saving strategy and concluded that at the scale of a part-time homebrewer the answer was no.  A big part of the cost of ingredients (inputs in econospeak) was the cost of hops (which were particularly high at the time).  But hops are practically a weed man, thought I, what if I grow my own?   So I did, or am about to, to be precise.  For $4.50 I bought a rhizome, a scrounged about for some unused pieces of wood to build a makeshift support for the vine and voila - hops!!  I hope.  

What to grow caused me to ponder - but not for too long.  I really wanted to grow two varieties (and in fact bought two rhizomes) but the wife convinced me that given our wee garden and my inexperience with gigantic hop vines, I had better just start with one.   I chose Cascade - I mean was there really a choice: high yielding, wonderfully versatile with a lovely citrusy-floral bouquet?  No.  Willamette was the other rhizome I bought (anyone want it?), I thought it would be a good complement but alas, next summer.

Finding space was a challenge and of course a good economist thinks about opportunity cost, so... out went the sage!  Opportunity cost of just about zero, right?  Apparently my wife was not so sure, but what's done is done and I am sure she will stop being mad at me once she tastes the beer that will result - and between now and then is only 6 or 7 months...

Nevertheless, your intrepid beeronomist jury-rigged a hop support and prayed that he would still have a fence come winter. Besides, I kept them out of the veggie beds which my wife controls (and hasn't gotten around to weeding yet) so I am on pretty firm ground here.  If only she were a beer lover...

So at about $2 an ounce, Cascade hops at Steinbarts are not cheap.  I think I can get at least a pound (though I have been told not to expect too much the first season).   But for a beer with a 8oz hop bill we are talking $16 saved...wow!  Okay, best we not think in terms of pure monetary reward.  The real reward comes in being a yeoman farmer (that is a way inside economics joke, by the way, for you macro-types - here's to you Bruce!) close to the earth and self-sufficient.

Unfortunately (or happily) it is now time to brew again and to gear up for the spring unveiling of my ultra special Hopopotamus® will require no less than three varieties of hop (and maybe even four) - so off to Steinbarts I shall go.  But I shall dream of Emerson's Special Wet Hop Ale come the early fall.