Stringing Your Trellis and Training Your Hop Vines

Here's a couple of great videos from HopsTV for all you hop growers out there. HopsDirect has been making videos on their farming process.  Farmer, Stacy Puterbaugh, provides a number of tips to the homebrew grower.

Check out how fast these guys are stringing the hop yard! A very simple knot is tied to the top guide wire at Boy Scout competition speed. Additional crew anchor the lines to the hop mound. Hops TV Episode 10: Stringing Hop Yard:


Stacy's soil is VERY different than what I have. Looks so soft compared to the intensely hard and rocky soil that I have to work with. Goes to show that hops can grow in a variety of soil conditions. Stacy shares very important information about the amount of water needed. Hops TV Episode 2: Training Hops and General Care:


Happy Hop Growing! I'm heading to my farm tomorrow for general maintenance.

Stay Classy IPA, February 27, 2011

I'm getting a bit excited for this year's AHA Conference here in San Diego.  The conference is hosted by a different city each year and usually it's too far to travel.  This will be my first National Homebrewers' Conference and I'm looking forward to all the fun other members in my homebrew club, QUAFF, talk about each year (yes, some go every year!).

Want to go!?  Better register soon, the conference is selling out fast!

One of the famed events during the conference is club night.  I know I can count on QUAFF to fully represent with a great showcase of homebrews and energy.  I haven't heard an announcement yet but I know that QUAFF will soon be asking us to contribute kegs for club night.  While hoppy is something I've always enjoyed, I haven't brewed hoppy in quite some time (probably since IPA pours out of drinking fountains around here!).  Here's to my renewed adventures in homebrews drenched in IBUs and contributing to the masses of hop heads at NHC.  Not sure if this beer will be around by then but you can count on this brew to be good learning ground.

Vessel Calibration in BeerTools Pro
One of the key draws to using brewing software is the ability to calculate strike and target temperatures during the mash.  It would enable you to better hit your temps when variables such as volume, time, and temperature change.  In BeerTools Pro, it allows you to run basic experiments to establish heating parameters for your brewing equipment.  Basically, calibration involves pouring a selected volume of heated water in each your mash tun, hot liquor tank, and kettle to measure the amount of heat loss over a specific amount of time.  The software also allows you to test your heating element to measure how fast you can heat a selected volume (useful for estimating heating times). 

Kettle calibration in BeerTools Pro to determine heat properties.

Before the software, it has been a bit of art and skill to hit desired mash temperatures.  A homebrewer gets to know his/her equipment with experience and eventually, it gets easier to hit your target temps. The problem was that I can sometimes be a couple of degrees off.  Seems to not be a very big deal but enzyme activity can be very temperature specific.  If you ever want to recreate the conditions that made that great beer, it's imperative to know how to hit your desired temperatures every time.
I would be very happy if I can trust the software to guided me to my mash temperatures every time.  After today's batch, it is apparent that I have a bit of tweaking to do.  I'm not sure if I should go through the calibration process again (for the mash tun only) or simply tweak the time point temperatures to match the observed temperatures during a brew day.  Oh, I should also verify/calibrate my thermometer before doing so (or would it an unknown thermometer provide acceptable relative values?) and for future brews.

Today's Mash Schedule with calculated strike temperatures in the Temp column.

Looking above, I heated my 3.44 (or close to that) gallons to 171.5°F for mash-in.  After 3 minutes of stirring and stabilizing, the mash was moderately consistent at 153°F.  Close enough for me and I was pretty excited.  At the end of the saccharification rest, BeerTools shows that I should have lost enough heat to have a final temp of 147.4°F.  My actual ending temperature was 152°F (only a loss of 1°).  Perhaps if I simply adjust my Mash Tun Calibration parameters for "Temp. After 5 Minutes" to lose 1° less and "Temp. After 65 Minutes" to show a total loss of also just 1°, I might be able to make this work. 
On to the beer,  check out that ingredient list!  Insane.  I used to try and simplify as much as possible (less is more) and now my homebrews are practically including the kitchen sink.  The ingredient list doesn't even include the adjusted water profile and salts.  As for the IBUs, doesn't the calculated 112.3 seem to be just too far out there for this hop schedule!?  I'll save that issue for another time, I need to chillindamos!

Stay Classy IPA

14-B American IPA
Author: Chillindamos
Date: 2/27/11

Size: 5.0 gal
Efficiency: 74.78%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 217.06 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.065 (1.056 - 1.075)
|===============#================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.016 (1.010 - 1.018)
|====================#===========|

Color: 6.85 (6.0 - 15.0)
|=========#======================|

Alcohol: 6.41% (5.5% - 7.5%)
|===============#================|

Bitterness: 112.3 (40.0 - 70.0)
|================================|

Ingredients:

9.0 lb 2-Row Brewers Malt
1.0 lb German Vienna
0.5 lb Belgian Munich
0.5 lb Crystal Malt 20°L
3.0 tsp 5.2 pH Stabilizer - added during mash
1.0 lb Dried Rice Extract
1.0 oz Homegrown Chinook (11.0%) - added first wort, boiled 90.0 min
1.0 oz Magnum (10.6%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
1 tsp Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15.0 min
1.0 oz Homegrown Chinook (11.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 oz Homegrown Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
1.0 tsp Servomyces - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
0.1 tsp Anti-Foam - added during boil, boiled 1.0 min
0.5 oz Simcoe (12.3%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
0.5 oz Citra (14.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
0.5 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
1.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale (update later)
0.5 oz Simcoe (12.3%) - added dry to secondary fermenter
1.0 oz Citra (14.0%) - added dry to secondary fermenter
0.5 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added dry to secondary fermenter

Schedule:

Ambient Air: 60.0 °F
Source Water: 60.0 °F
Elevation: 0.0 m

00:14:26 Mash-In - Liquor: 3.44 gal; Strike: 171.48 °F; Target: 152.0 °F
01:14:26 Saccharification Rest - Rest: 60.0 min; Final: 147.4 °F
01:24:26 Vorlauf, bitches! - Rest: 10.0 min; Final: 146.7 °F
02:24:26 Fly Sparge - Sparge Volume: 5.1 gal; Sparge Temperature: 168.0 °F; Runoff: 5.74 gal

Notes

70% dilution rate. 4 grams Gypsum, 1 gram Epsom Salt, and 1 gram of Baking Soda added to the mash. Chinook and Centennial hops are grown at our hop farm (IBUs estimated). Mash dilution ratio: 1.04 Tap, 2.41 Water Lady (3.44 gallons total). HLT dilution ratio: 1.51 tap, 3.59 Water Lady (5.1 gallons total). Oxygen added for 60 seconds. OG 1.065 @ 66°F. 1 vial to 800ml yeast starter (used dark malt extract which should have a small impact on resulting SRM). Recently finished calibrating all vessels and mostly was able to use BeerTools software to predict target temperatures. Mash-in was over my 1°F which is close enough that I simply continued to stir the mash for a few more minutes. The calculated final temperature for the saccharification rest was the most off, about 5°F lower.

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.12


Turned out to be an awesome IPA. Kara tested for IBUs: 84.5. This value is actually higher than what I expected and certainly more than what is perceived. If I were to guess, I would say that it's around 65 IBUs.  The next IPA brewed has some minor changes and more hops.  Will be nice to also have that tested to see if the value is a tad higher than 84.5 IBUs.

Hop Farm Season 2011 Begins!

Around this time of year, it's usually a good idea to start getting ready for the upcoming hop growing season.  My hop farm is located in sun drenched San Diego North County.  I have three terraced rows on a north-facing slope.  Each row is setup to accommodate ten mounds (for a total of 30 mounds) which seems more than enough to handle on a casual basis.  Here's several images to show the preseason hop farm:

Hop Farm from the top of the mulch hill.

Hop Farm from the east.

Detail of the terraces with lots of weeds to pull.

Hop Farm from the lower east slope.

Hop Farm from the lower west slope. Avocado tree to the right.

Today, Michelle and I set out mostly to start weeding and mulching.  The ground was nicely wet from recent rains so the weeds were easy to pull. While we worked for quite some time, we were only able to take care of the top row (Chinook and Centennial).  Next weekend we will try to recruit Kara to come and help with the bottom two rows (although the outlook looks like rain again).

My wife, Michelle, taking out those weeds!

After the weed pulling (which never stops) and mulching, we'll need another work day to prune the mounds.   Essentially, this involves shoveling and cutting around the mound to trim down the roots to prevent the plants from popping up away from the mound.  This should also present opportunities to find rhizomes to share with others.  I have a few QUAFF buddies already signed up for Chinook and Centennial rhizomes.

Hop Farm Row 1 (Chinook and Centennial) weeded and mulched.

Beyond pruning comes trellis maintenance and restringing.  All of my posts seem to be in good condition this year.  I will need to re-anchor the end-posts of each row to help keep the top guide-line taut.   A small buried cement block might do the trick.  I know that hop farms restring each year with twine but I have been using wire.  I'm finding the wire tends to rust out after one or two season so perhaps I should also look into finding a better solution for this as well.

Row 1 from the west, after weeding and mulching.

Another concern, I need to find better solutions for the problem with rabbits and gophers chewing on the vines.  In some cases, these wascal wabbits have chewed mature cone bearing vines that essentially put an early season stop to some of my mounds.  Possibly a simple chicken-wire cage will keep the nasty gnawers at bay.  See some of my previous hops seasons' blog posts on this topic and more.

One Chinook hop mound seems to already be breaking soil.

As for this year's last planning element, I want to replace all the mounds in the middle row with two new varieties of "C" hops.  While the former two varieties,  Magnum and Vojvodina, had a good running, last year had a significant decrease in viability and yield.  It's time to get rid of these and move on.  Considering the success of my Chinook and Centennial mounds, I believe other "C" hops will likely do as well.  I recently pre-ordered Columbus hops and am crossing my fingers for Cluster or Citra to be available this year.  Even Simcoe (we'll write it "Cimcoe" to keep with the theme) would be desirable.

Here's a couple of links for buying rhizomes directly from the source.  As of now, no rhizome source has a list of what will be available this year.  Several homebrew suppliers and stores will also have rhizomes available beginning next month.  I got really excited when More Beer! announced their rhizome pre-order a couple of weeks ago and jumped at the chance to order Columbus hops.  Their pre-sale deal is only good until March 1st.
Rhizomes from Hops Direct
Rhizomes from Northwest Hops

Hops Direct made a YouTube video series last season to show the hop farming process.  They're great if you haven't seen them yet.  Hop farmer guru at Hops Direct, Stacy Puterbaugh, shows you how to plant hops and even what a large scale hop harvest looks like.  I'll share some of these videos here as the season moves on.

Hops TV, Episode 1: Planting Hops

Centennial Hops Breaking Ground

Though many of the mounds have been breaking ground, I buried many of the first sprouts with surrounding soil, fertilizer, and mulch. Hops grow best in mounds. They'll poke through again in just a few days but at least they'll have a mound again to build on. This is a Centennial rhizome managing to poke through the rebuilt mound.
Sent from my mobile phone.

Hop Farm Fertilizing and Mulching

We trellis wired the last of the mounds, fertilized, and mulched today. Since the bottom row hasn't been successful for the past two years, we heavily fertilized and mulched this area. We also changed the irrigation drippers at the bottom row from 0.5 GPH to 1.0 GPH. Hopefully, this will correct our assumption that poor hop growth was caused by nutrient deficient and dry soil.
Sent by my mobile phone.

Centennial Hops Rhizomes Split and Transplanted

Today we finished splitting the centennial hops on the top row to plant the bottom half. Total hop count on the farm: 10 Chinook, 10 Centennial, 5 Vojvodina, 5 Magnum. Look how neat those rows look now!
Sent from my mobile phone.

Hop Farm, March 22 2008

Half of the bottom row is planted with Chinook. I've tried for 2 years to establish cascade hops in the same section sadly without success. Chinook and Centennial, sharing the top row of farm, grow remarkably well. We leveled out more of the bottom row and plan to hit with a fertilizer and mulch it well. Hopefully, chinook and centennial will do just as well on the bottom row as they have been doing on the top row. Very tired after doing just about 4 hours of work. Ed helped out tons. He pruned nearly every mound! We will have a bit of time to do a little work tomorrow though Easter gatherings will keep us drinking more than working.
Sent from my mobile phone.

Planting Chinook Hops

Hop rhizomes are planted in mounds raised above the soil surface. They only need about 1 inch of topsoil above them. The soil at the hop farm is not the greatest but with a small amount of fertilizer or mulch, the hops do just fine.
Sent from my mobile phone.

Splitting The Chinook Hop Rhizome

Today we're trying to complete many of the needed tasks to get the hop farm off to a great start this season. Here is a split rhizome from the top row chinook hop. One of the chinook crowns was massive. This one alone was split to make 5 new mounds for 1/2 of the bottom row. All you need for splitting a rhizome to make a new plant is a small section of root showing new shoots. The bigger the hunk, the more successful your new plant will be during its first season.
Sent from my mobile phone.

Last Year's Hop Farm and Moblog Test

Really I'm just testing out my moblog ability (sending txt and pictures directly to the blog from my cell phone). I have several pictures of my hop farm on my phone. This was taken during the harvest in July of 2007. Blogger makes it very easy to send txt, pic, and video messages directly to a blog. With a pic message, I can still send 1000 characters. Now, I'll be able to blog from beer events anywhere! Here's a mobile cheers to ya.
Sent from my mobile phone.

Hop Farm, March 18 2008

Worked on the hop farm yesterday with my brother-in-law. He started homebrewing recently and has been using last year's hops. Now I have a dedicated helper!
Today's the first day I've touched the farm since December (routine weeding). You can see that some of last year's vines are still intact. We had a very wet winter here in southern California and the growth really shows. We really wanted to clear the weeds, remove last year's vines, rewire each mound, level each terrace, split the top row rhizomes for the bottom row, prune the mounds, fertilize, and mulch. That didn't all happen.

The weeds alone kept us busy along with rewiring the trellis. I could see lots of other seeds in the soil so this spring will be an ongoing battle. Luckily, there's a huge mound of mulch above the top row. This helps keeps the weeds down while holding in moisture and providing good soil.

With all the rain we've had this season and the consistent movement of the mulch pile, the terrace levels are more of slant. This makes it difficult to use the ladder now and during harvest time. Instead of plowing through, we had to be careful of the irrigation line and the hops that have recently greeted spring.

We removed all of the old vines and decided to replace the wire. Each wire is grounded by a rebar stake. Using the old wire as a guide, we dug to the rebar stake loop and wrapped new wire rather than pulling out every stake.

Once all the weeds were cleared, you can see the hops are already taking off. On the top row, there are 5 mounds each of Chinook and Centennial (separated by a pole in the middle). In the middle row are 5 mounds each of Vojvodina and Magnum. The bottom row has spent two years trying to establish Tettnanger and Cascade without any significant growth. Since the Chinook and Centennial do exceptionally well, this year the top row rhizomes will be split and planted in the bottom row.
Above is the top row, the Chinook half. We have a bit of work to do this coming weekend: splitting, planting, pruning, fertilizing, and mulching.