Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Hops Harvest 2012

On September 5, 2012

The season is over yet again and all the cones have been picked. We had a successful hops harvest 2012.

But not as successful as I thought it would be. Here’s why I think so.

It was a weird year – we really didn’t much of a winter so the shoots came up pretty early. Noting that it was the plant’s third year, I let it grow as much as possible. I didn’t cut back the shoots at all. Maybe I should have, since not all of the bines were winners. I would say a good number didn’t produce any cones at all.

I did trim back the leaves once we got into late June to try to get more energy into producing hops rather than big green leaves. That sorta worked.

I didn’t water the plant as much as I did last year. I was giving it a good drink 5 times a week at least during the dry spells in 2011. This year, I was more lax.

My goal was to get a pound of dry hop cones out of it this season, and I got less than last year. I haven’t weighed them yet, but I am pretty sure I got more than ounce and that is my minimum goal.

I guess the true end goal is to make one harvest ale every year. Besides that, I am not going to brew a classic style using my home grown hops.

On the other side of the fence, my brother had his best harvest ever. Now I will be able to bitter with the home grown Magnum and use Mt. Hood for the late editions.

Next year:

Prune back the weaker shoots
Water more often
Cut back the oak tree limbs above the shed to get more sunshine to the hop bines
Pray for a colder winter – nope, can’t type that sincerely

Calypso Hops

By John Krochune

On August 29, 2012

In Hops

I am always on the lookout for new hop varieties to use for homebrewing. With the help of a little search engine known as Goggle or something like that, I find information from different sources and try my best to compile them all into a full profile. In the past, I would just write it up but now if I find ones that I don’t think are widely available – I’ll wait untill I see them for sale somewhere.

Also, if I see that people reading our site are searching for a specific variety we haven’t written a post for it, I’ll get on my research cap and start compiling and writing.

We got a bunch of searches for Calypso hops over the past few months, so here is the profile.

From the Hopsteiner.com site, it appears they were bred by them and they are a cross between a couple of their own male/female hop varieties (the male one was derived from Nugget) and another non-branded hop variety known as USDA 19058m. Release year was 2011.

Now for the round up of other points of interest:

Origin: USA

Aroma/Flavor: Hints of pear and apple, some say lemon lime – Meyer lemon, notes of earthly tea, pleasant

Alpha Acid: 12 to 14%

Typical Usage: The official site has it down as a dual purpose hop.

Beer Styles: Saison? IPA? Maybe try a single hop pale ale and see if you like them.

We brewed with this variety in our SMaSH beer series. Check our Calypso beer tasting notes here.

Munich Dunkel Recipe

By Mike

On August 24, 2012

In All Grain

Munich Dunkel Recipe

10lbs Munich Malt (10L)
2.5lbs Pilsner Malt (2L)
0.25lb Carafa Special II (430L)
0.5oz Magnum (14%AA) FWH
0.5oz Tettnang (4.5%AA) 20min
0.5oz Tettnang (4.5%AA) 5min
WLP830 German Lager (repitched from Munich Helles)

EST OG 1.050
EST IBUs 25
EST Color 16 RM

Pitch slurry of yeast at 48F.
Let free rise to 52F and hold for 21days.
Cold lager for 4-8weeks

Traditional Munich Dunkel Recipes can be found using 100% Munich Malt. Here I lighten it up with ~20% Pilsner malt.

Vienna Lager Brew Day

By John Krochune

On August 21, 2012

In All Grain, Brew Log

Another brew night and another threat of rain. I put up the trusty tarp to keep rain water from falling on my head and into my brew kettle. It turned out that the rain didn’t start falling until after the wort was in the fermentor.

Fairly easy beer to brew. I only had to measure ingredients a half pound here, a half ounce there, and a couple ounces over there. The rest was in pound increments which Northern Brewer measured for me already.

Hit the mash temp of 152°F without any need of adjustment. In the summer air, the grain and the cooler are pretty warm so my strike temperature of 163°F was perfect.

The boil went well (maybe a small boil over here and there) and remembered to put in a small amount of irish moss this time.

I chilled it down as low as I could get in an hour, then racked it to the clean, sanitized fermentor, stopped it with a bung and airlock, and put it in the fridge. The next day, the wort was sitting there at 50°F so I aerated for an hour and then pitched my yeast from the WLP830 slurry that Mike collected from his Munich lager.

Bohemian Pilsner Bottling Day

By John Krochune

On August 19, 2012

In Brew Log

Time flies when you are waiting for beer to finish lagering. Uh, no – not really. Time sorta stands still.

The Master of Lagers series has been anything but instant gratification, but as the saying goes, I hope our patience will be rewarded.

After almost 8 weeks in the fridge, the Bohemian Pilsner was bottled the same night the Vienna Lager was brewing. Homebrewer are multitaskers by nature. To be honest, these two tasks wouldn’t have coincided if Mike wasn’t there to watch the boil while I filled and capped the bottles.

The finished beer was golden and clear-ish as I transferred it from the carboy to the bottling bucket. I expect it to clear more once it has time to settle in the bottle as my other lagers have.

The tastings of the uncarbonated beer were satisfactory. No contamination defects that I could detect. Mike said the malt profile was strong and it tasted wort-y – which he meant as a compliment.

It’s hard to tell how the finished beer is going to taste before, you know, it’s finished. In two weeks, we should have better notes on this beer.