Hops update July 13 2012

 Growing Hops at Home  No Responses »
Jul 132012
 

Here’s a quick update. After looking at the hops garden yesterday. I think I might break out the ladder and start harvesting some of the Ultra hops. There’s a lot of large cones present yet it seems to be setting a second (and more prolific) round of cones. Not that I’m complaining!

The Cascade hops are looking good and I’ll be harvesting them in a couple of weeks. Here’s one of the Cascade cones that I split open.

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Look at that lupulin! The aroma is that of freshly cut grapefruit. Mmmm.

The Galena hops are growing, albeit slowly. They are over 6 feet talk now and are starting to grow burrs.  If they don’t do better next year them I’ll replace then with Cascades.

Prost!
MM

Hops Update 30 April 2012

 Growing Hops at Home  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

Just an update to my hops gardening for April 30th 2012. My cascade hops rhizome has produced one 100_2086shoot so far and it is growing FAST. within 3 days time it has gone from just barely breaking the surface to almost 2 inches tall.  This one should be a fast grower! I can’t wait til I can harvest some Cascade hops off this plant. If I get a couple ounces of dried Cascade hops it’ll go nicely in a Harvest ale at the end of the growing season.

The Galena hops rhizome had me a little worried at first. It was taking 100_2085 it’s sweet time sending a shoot up to break the surface. However once it did it sent not one, not two but THREE shoots up. Hopefully this one will grow quickly as well. It needs to catch up to the rest of the hops. Galena normally has a fairly strong citrus aroma and I love using it for dry hopping my IPA. This along with the Cascade will make an awesome Harvest ale in early Fall.

The Ultra (decided to stop calling them Ultra/Crystal and just claim100_2087 them to be Ultra until I’m told otherwise) have been on a growth spurt. Two out of the four bines reached 18-19 inches in length and then fell over onto the support line and wrapped themselves. I had always read that you had to train them to the string because they wouldn’t 100_2089 wrap naturally. These are proving that to be wrong! That’s ok by me, maybe they’re just smart hops and will make the worlds first smart beer!

The remaining Ultra hop bine is growing a bit slower but still growing at a rate of about 1.5-2 inches a day. It should be on the string within100_2091 the next couple days. At least I hope it is since I’ll be going camping for a few days at the end of the week and I would like it on the string by then.  Right now it’s about 10.5 inches tall and I just gave them all a good  feeding yesterday of Miracle-Gro.

There you go, my update for the end of April. I’ll take more pics and do another update early next week after I come back from camping.

 

Prost!
MM

Buying Hops In Bulk.

 Main, Reviews  No Responses »
Feb 162012
 

There are many ways to save money in home brewing. First of all brewing your own beer in itself will save you money over buying craft beer off the shelf. Extract brewing is where almost all home brewers get their start, but All Grain brewing costs a LOT less. In some instances brewing a batch of beer using grains can cost you half as much as extract. But are there way to save over switching to All Grain? Of course there are!

Most All Grain brewers know that buying grain in bulk saves money. If you’re a member of a brew club and get in on a group buy that cost gets even lower. For instance the last group buy I was part of a 55lb bag of 2row barley cost me around $30. In the end it worked out to $0.59 per lb. But what about extract brewers? Can they save money buying in bulk? You bet you can. Both All Grain and Extract brewer need hops for their beers. Buying in bulk can save you a lot of money.

I recently made a bulk purchase from Hops Direct for some whole leaf Galena hops. I like using whole hops for 2012-02-15 12.19.26dry hopping and since I plan on brewing more IPA this year I knew I’d need plenty of hops. A quick visit the the Hops Direct website showed me the hops they had in stock and the price. My LHBS where I get just about all my yeast, hops and specialty grains charges $2.15 per ounce for pellet hops and its very rare that they carry whole hops. I found a hop I was happy with as it was second choice. My first choice was Citra but those sell out very quickly each season. So I added 1lb of Galena to my cart and headed to checkout. The cost per pound was $10.05 for Whole Leaf Galena. Shipping was a little steep even for USPS Priority shipping and brought the total up to $21.80. This is still cheaper than my LHBS for their price on pellet hops.

The day after placing my order I received an email from Hops Direct letting me know that my package was 2012-02-15 12.19.11being shipped.  USPS shipping can be quick unless its during a peak season like Xmas. Unfortunately the USPS is SLOW on updating their tracking information. My Package was listed as shipped on 2/13/2012 and on 2/15/2012 even though the USPS site didn’t have any updated tracking info my mail carrier brought me a package. That’s 2 days from Washington state to Georgia. For those not up on their geography that’s pretty much from one corner of the country to the other. Needless to say I was very impressed.

Not only did Hops direct email me an electronic receipt of my purchase and the tracking info for my purchase but they also emailed me a scanned copy of the paper receipt. VERY thorough and I love being kept in the loop about everything. My hops arrived packed in a Mylar bag. They weren’t vacuum sealed and I think that would have been better but it was an entire pound of hops. You’d need a vacuum sealer with a big vacuum/sealing bar for that big bag.

I quickly started breaking the bulk hops into 2oz. packages. Now I’ll never claim to be a math wiz but I do know a few things about weight. There are 16 ounces per pound. Plain and simple. However, after weighing out 2oz. packages instead of having 8 packages, I had 9 and almost 10!. Total weight in my bag was 19.3 ounces! That brings my total cost per ounce down to about $1.10.

2012-02-15 20.14.06For any home brewer that plans on buying hops in bulk I highly recommend buying a vacuum sealer. I know I love mine and use it for more than just packaging hops. Your Wife/GF/Husband/BF will be able to use it as well and it really can help save money on groceries. It makes packaging the hops a snap and will help them last a lot longer (you can vacuum seal specialty grains that won’t get used often as well). Here are my hops after breaking down to nine (9) 2oz. packages and one (1) 1.3oz. package along with 1.5oz. of Citra. Such a beautiful sight to see. I would have used Mylar barrier bags but they don’t work in most (any) home vacuum sealers. This is due to the bags being EXTREMELY smooth on the inside and not allowing the oxygen to be removed before the sealer detects negative pressure. I know there are ways to trick the vacuum sealer into working, I just don’t have any Mylar bags on hand to experiment with. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be storing these hops for over a year and they’ll be in the freezer.

Oh yeah, the price for 1lb of Galena pellet hops is even cheaper. $8.65 add in $10.75 in shipping which breaks down to around $0.82 per ounce IF they only include 16 ounces. That’s a HUGE savings in the price of hops alone. As you can see buying in bulk is a great way to make an already cheap hobby even cheaper. Please keep supporting your LHBS or they’ll be gone and that’ll leave you wishing they were still around when you REALLY need something so you can brew that day or the next. Buy you base grains in bulk, buy your most common hops in bulk, wash and reuse yeast a few times, but buy specialty grains, hops that you’ll use rarely and yeast at the LHBS. They can also be a great place to buy equipment and get advice on your beers.

There’s one other way to save money on hops. That’s to grow your own. But that’s going to wait for a bit longer while I wait for my rhizomes to arrive…

Prost!
MM

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