Tag Archives: hops

Wizard Spring 2015 Update!

It’s been awhile since we last updated so, sit back and enjoy…

Well shortly after we got the greenhouse up and running, we built our planters benches. Got all of our fruits and veggies growing nicely. We also started a handful of hops early

greenhouse hops

Just when we thought it was break time, a delivery of 140 new poles arrived. They ended up getting bundled wrong so, it was a chore loading them off of the semi!

pole delivery

We waited until the field was somewhat dry to start putting them up. Thankfully we had Alex’s help with the installation. Got them all up in about a week!

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Oh yeah, we also installed about 1000ft of drainage too…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And today…. despite the rain, we picked up 1,300+ hop plants from Great Lakes Hops.

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Stay tuned for another update!

~Mr. Wizard

Brewing Trip Up-North!

We took the trip up north this Labor Day weekend to visit my son, Brian. We ended up doing some home-brewing with our freshly processed, whole leaf, hops. We brought two ounces of Centennial and three ounces of Cascade. Brian ended up choosing an American IPA to brew up (see recipe).

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Brewing Trip

We brewed this using an all grain recipe that included 2-row malted barley and 60L Crystal malt. Mashed in at 158 degrees for 90 minutes. Then boiled for 90 minutes, adding hops at different intervals. Our original gravity measured in at 1.059 and we’re shooting for a final gravity of 1.018 – leaving an abv around 5.4% (tasty!)

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We will be doing another 5 gallon batch with our Cascade and Magnums very soon too!

The Beginning

We acquired our Cascade, Centennial, and Goldings in early march of 2014 and proceeded to plant them in 20 planting containers. Each container had three rhizomes planted in them. We kept them in an enclosed back porch area that received plenty of sunshine. We constructed our poles, selected the area to plant them, turned the soil, installed and set four poles with coir yarn for our twine in sections of four. We kept the base mulched and weed free as much as possible. Soon they were trained to grow up the twine and at this time are approximately 6-8 feet tall. Since we lost a few due to excessive heat, we replaced the empty spaces with Magnum plants. These have filled in quite nicely and seemed to have caught up with the others. Continue reading The Beginning →