Sprouts of Love

Nikki and I recently went out to the hop yard and I was reminded of that famous Shakespearean stanza,

"Hark, sprouts of love,
 Yon distant yard groweth
 Whence thou was bare.
 Oh, ye bitter brew made
 with hops so beauteous."

Okay, I made that up; and I didn't have any thoughts of Shakespeare when we saw this glorious sight:

Mmmmm, future aroma and/or bittering hops!

Spring (or so the calendar says) 2013

Back into growing season in CNY and looking forward to watching our young bines make their climb!  We still have a fair amount of work to do - irrigation, weed management and completion of the trellis systems among them.  We'll also be planting 40, or so, new plants to increase our yields and round out our test hop yard.  These'll be more mature plants with one or two more varieties to add to our collection.

Tom, Jay and I continue to perfect our brewing techniques and equipment.  We've had some very successful all-grain batches and are feeling that the American Pale Ale and Kolsch styles will be consistent menu items.  In fact, we're submitting these two beers in the NYS Home Brew Competition in May - awards will be given out at the NYS Fair in August.

Our rudimentary "brew-house" for all-grain brewing -
hot water tank, mash tun and boiling pot

We continue to have lots of discussions with others who've been working toward a "farm brewery" in the area and will hopefully learn from their mistakes.  The Limestone Creek Brewery business plan is complete and we're talking with investors.  This year we're focused on getting our larger, 10+ acre hop yard site set up for 2014 planting.  We also hope to have a test site for barley planting and malting set up this summer.  

Is anyone interested in working as a taster?  We really need to find an objective source to perfect the 3-4 styles we're going to focus on.  I guess I'll find out who's reading my posts by how many responses to my taste-tester plea I get.....

And now I lay me down to sleep...

Now that we've had a couple of "kill" frosts in Upstate NY it's time for our baby hop's to go to bed for the winter.  Fortunately, a 65 degree Sunday came along to make my life a little more enjoyable and the job a little easier!

Winterized Hop Yard - Fall 2012

A shovel full of the Miller Gold compost mix (yard waste, coffee grinds from the office, and Miller food scraps) followed by 8-10" of wood chips and the hop hill's are nestled in nicely.  We didn't cut the hop plants back this year since they were put in so late in the season, but in coming years we'll have harvested the main bines and cut back the plants a bit.

I visited a local hop farmer on Saturday who's actually trying to get out of the business due to a variety of reasons.  He's got about 5 acres of 4 year old hop plants in a number of varieties.  He claims 2012 was a very bad year for local hop farmers as a result of the ridiculous warmth we had in March this year followed by freezes.  He claims 60% losses this year; not as much loss as others due to some precautions he took.

The covering of the hills that I did last weekend should prevent any problems associated with early growth.  I won't pull back the wood chips until early May.  I'll then cover them with some dried horse manure to give them that spring boost!

We keep brewing some great batches and are close to choosing our "top 3" that will be the first larger batches.  Now we need to invest in some big brew pots and fermenters!

Thanks for coming by!

Practice, Practice, PORTER!

Let's talk about brewing beer.

My brewing partners, Tom and Jason, stopped by after a trip to the brew supply store to cook up a London Porter. This is a style we haven't made before, but we were looking for a full bodied beer that will pair well with the falling leaves and cooling temperatures. The recipe is a partial grain/partial LME (Liquid Malt Extract) variety that lets us have a little flexibility (grains) while saving a bit of time (LME).

Tom enjoys a little left over grains - fiber-licious!

The process takes just over 3 hours not counting the trip to the store. Steep the grains, add the LME, bring to a boil, add hops over the course of an hour, cool it down, dump it into the fermenting vessel, "pitch" the yeast, cover and your done.

During the process we have a little time to discuss our next purchase - a kegging system! Bottling isn't that difficult, and it does make it convenient to split our batch among one another, but putting the beer into a keg allows for only a few days wait to drink. And, lets face it, having a keg of homebrew is just plain cool!

A peek at the Porter once it's been transferred to the secondary fermenter -  notice the hops and "trub" that the siphon helps filter out.

This batch will be very tasty. How do I know? Well, one of the benefits of being the one to transfer to the secondary is that I get to take a little sample to measure the specific gravity. A calculation of the difference between the specific gravity reading before pitching the yeast (OG) and at the time you bottle it (FG) gives you an approximate alcohol content.

Since we're going to put this batch into our new 5 gallon keg system it should be ready to drink a few days after we transfer it. We'll tip one for you!

The Hops Have Landed!

While others may be celebrating the landing of the Mars Rover "Curiosity" the Limestone Creek Brewing Co. is ecstatic over the landing of our first plants in the test site!

"Mounding" the old fashioned way (not!)

These are the virus indexed stock plants we purchased through NeHA and the Cornell Cooperative Extension and include Newport and Fuggle varieties.  Being so late in the season we just want to get them in the ground so they can establish themselves for next growing season.  We expect our first abundant crop of hops in 2015 from this planting.

As you can see below, I created a temporary trellis system off of our permanent hop poles to give them a little growing room through the rest of the summer and into the fall.  Now, if only we can keep the ridiculously large deer population from eating them all before they get comfortable!  Any ideas?

Hops in the ground and ready to climb

Test Field Bravo

Bob and I finally found a day we could both devote some time to the raising of the trellis system, so we brought out the heavy equipment and raised some poles.  Bob figured out the post hole digger attachment after a little experimentation; he dug holes while I prepped the poles by cutting to 21' and drilling holes in top to run the trellis cable through next spring.

The "inaugural" hop pole (looking NW toward the future Oast house)

As you can see, we off-centered the poles in this row - once we have the hop yard laid out there will be free-floating cables running between the cable supports. The free-floating cables will have the hop "bines" running up to them for their top support.

Riley and Bob providing comic relief

The soil in this spot is pretty much perfect - we assume it was farmed at some point in the recent past based on the lack of rocks alone. This will be considered the test yard mostly because beyond the 1.5 - 2 acres of good soil we have mostly very large limestone boulders right up to the surface.  However, these make great landscaping tools that will add to the scenery once we have the Oast and visitor center built!

Thumbs up!

Name on the books!  "Limestone Creek Brewing Co."  Are you down with the LCB?