I spoke with Tim for over an hour and learned a lot about his operation.  This past year he harvested 600lbs of hops!  Some of them were pellets and others were sold as whole leaf hops.  Tim offers a fall “you pick’em” special for $5 a bucket full of fresh hops.

This past year he built an oast out of a greenhouse that he is able to haul from the farm to his house for winter storage.  Tim has a pelletizer that allows him to offer pellet hops of all varieties.

He indicated what I have heard a lot about hops in New York, the C letter hops grow best in NYS.  His Cascade, centennial and Chinook all grew the best on his farm.

This spring I am going to go visit with Tim to see how he gets the trellis’ setup and treats the sprouts.

Special thanks to Tim, I personally picked up 3lbs of cascade that I broke up and vacuumed sealed in smaller packs.  Should make for a productive winter!

This past weekend I picked the last of my hops and prepped the vines for winter.  According to the hops stuff I’ve been reading, you cut the hops vines down to about 3″ sticking out of the ground.  From there, you just take the vines, cut off the hops, and dry.  Simple enough. 

Below is a picture of two ounces of Cascade vacuum sealed.  I picked up an actual vacuum sealer and I am very glad that I did.  It’s awesome!  My total harvest was just shy of a pound so not too bad, though I hope that next year is a big year.  So far the Cascade hops has been carrying the load with my harvest. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=954STxWuO8c]

Ben’s video

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I know that I have been a very poor blogger in the last few weeks and for that I am sorry.  While my brewing and blogging diligence has failed, my hops have continued to grow.  As you can see, I already have some cascade hops growing and they are looking great.  New York has experienced a very rainy summer thus far and while it has caused my tan to suffer (who am I kidding, I make Powder look like a tanning bed whore), the extra rain has put my hops into a growing frenzy. 

Brewing is looking to be sporadic for the summer as I imagine it is with a lot of people, but I will be doing something in the near future and I am going to be reviewing a few products as well.  On top of all this, I will be hosing Fermentation Friday for July (even though I missed June). 

Cheers

First off, earlier this week I hung the cross supports on the 4×4 beams.  These were 1×6, 4 feet long with a cut made 10″ in leaving 2″.  This gives that nice finish seen below.

Next, I ran 3, 2X6 12′ pressure treated beams over the top to hold the slats that ran across the top of the trellis.

For the top, I bought 12 eight foot 1by 2 pieces of pressure treated wood.  I cut the pieces in half and made a piece of wood for a spacer so that they would be even. 

I painted the whole thing, which, as my wife informed me it would be, took a VERY long time to paint.  No matter, it’s done and it looks very good. 

I took some time to dig up the area in between my hops plant and in between the posts so that I can make the whole thing into a proper bed for my hops.  To make matters better, my father has two or three more hops plants in pots that he got from a friend waiting for me next weekend.

Some how this weekend I also managed to till and prep my garden, clean the garage, dig up the walkway to the gate removing all the roots and enjoy a few beers.  I am enjoying my Belgian that I think, while not a Belgian Dubbel, is a Belgian Strong Pale Ale.  Cheers.

I’ve decided to make some changes on my design and I am going to be doing something like this:

Special Thanks to Growing-Image.com for the idea

Mine will be a little wider – 4′ – and have three posts, but the idea is the same.  As I was looking around at how best to build one of these, I was really last as to the best way to make it look nice and have it tall enough to allow the hops enough room to grow.  This is nice because when it’s all built, the whole thing should be near 8 ft tall and 4ft wide so that the hops can grow up and over it.  Plus it should look really nice too.

Next up I am going to mount the cross beams onto the posts.  That will hopefully be tonight (weather permitting anyway).

Pictured below are the post markers for where my 4×4 posts went.  I purchased 3 8ft 4×4 posts of pressure treated wood for this project ($9 each).  I also had to pick up a special shovel for the project from Harbor Freight as the post hole digger was like $35 and I was not into spending that much on something I was only going to use once.

I used two 60lb bags of quickcrete to set the posts in place.  Each post hole was 18″ deep (Nick recommended 24″ and I was thinking 12″ so I split the difference) and after checking this morning, I think they will be plenty sturdy.  As you will note from the picture, I used two support stakes on each post and used a level to ensure they were straight both ways.

The post on the far right has a bow to it, but after messing around with it, I noticed that it will straighten out once I put the cross beam in.

The next step is to cut and secure the cross beam up to the three posts.  From there, I need to decide if I am going to connect this to the fence as I originally planned, or just make it a free standing trellis.  If I connect it to the fence, I just need to get one more  wood piece to run parallel to the fence and all the perpendicular pieces for the top.  We’ll see how things line up after the connection beam is in place…

Cheers.

Not to be out done by my toothless neighbors to the south, it’s time that I finally made a proper hops trellis.  With that in mind, I’ve decided on a design.  The picture above is a concept that I am going to use in my design, tonight I am going to make some measurements and get a list of items needed to make this happen.  I am not sure if I am going to be able to get to this right away, but perhaps I can set the three posts this weekend.

The idea is pretty simple, use my fence and the distance from where the hops are planted to set up a trellis the same height as the fence.  I am going to run a cross board parallel to the three posts (that will be positioned in relation to the hops) using the fence to as the opposing posts.  I will run a few cross beams between the newly set posts and the fence as a means of giving the hops something to grow on and that’s it!  I might run some wire around it for growing, but twine has been working well so I might just set up a yearly twine stringing.

I’m just in time since my hops are just starting to pop up so hopefully I can have this complete in the next few weeks.  I also still have a can of paint from last year’s fence painting so I’ll be able to make the whole thing match.

Good stuff.

Cheers.

So over the past few weeks I’ve been pretty tied up with life and have not had a lot of time for brewing.  This has not stopped my from trying new beers though.  This is a Maredsous 8, a Belgian Dubbel that gets much BA’er love with an A- rating (I know, BA ratings are garbage because there is no qualifying the people that rate them, it’s still something). 

For me, the aroma on this really knocked me over.  This smelled like a fine Scotch or a brandy, not because of the alcohol, but just the profile, it really caused me to have a double take.  There were some chocolate notes in there too.  The color was cherry-wood, great for the style with a caramel colored head that left a few fingers of lacing.

This was also an overly carbonated beer.  I was surprised because usually the quark beers are like this, but not the capped ones.  This one broke the mold.  The good news is that the aggressive carbonation did not come off in the mouth feel too much, although after a few, your taste buds feel a little abused.

Over all this was a nutty sweet caramel dance on your pallet that leaves you wanting more.  This is not an overwhelming beer, but one that is better balanced than some in the style.  The flavor falls short of the intense aroma, but that’s not a bad thing, it makes for a sensory thriller where you never know what is going to happen.

I know these pictures are not easy to see, but there are little purple shoots coming out of the ground.  Those are my hops!  I am pretty fired up this year to finally get a full growth cycle out of them.  I have to make a run to the garden center for some stuff and I am going to get some food for my babies as well. 

Cheers