Kölschy Bogman!

This weekend I brewed a Kölsch. Kölsch just means Cologne-ish, and it is also the name of the dialect they speak there. During Carnival, the festival that starts in november (at 11.11 on the 11th of November- hilarious Germans!) and runs until Ash Wednesday, hoards of Köln folk wander around under the twin towers of the Dom, swilling lots of this beer from a little glasses called a stange. They dress up in odd costumes and listen to extremely silly oompah music, and for some bizarre reason three men pay lots of money each year to dress up as Virgin, a Prince, and a Farmer. they look very silly, particularly the virgin.

In any case, the beer is quite nice, so I decided to brew some. It is a light beer, not too hoppy, very pale in colour, displaying some of the dry crispness of a lager. Mostly though, I wanted to brew it because I like a good pun in the title of a beer. It has long been my belief that you should think of a witty title, and then brew the beer to fit. I apply this maxim to my academic philosophical studies also.

The beer is called “Culchie Bogman”. For those non-Irish among you, a “culchie” is how Dubliners refer affectionately to our rural cousins. sometimes they embrace it, sometimes they don’t, it doesn’t tend to bother us. If any of you want to read up more on the culchie, here is a link to their annual festival.

To make matters even more fantastic, my friend Maeve, the talented artist kindly offered to do a label for the beer. I will handsomely reward her with… em… beer. When it’s ready. Here is Maeve’s blog containing some beautiful artwork.

I think the label is fantastic, so I hope the beer can live up to it. Anyway here is my recipe:

“Culchie Bogman” Kölsch. 35L

Pilsener Malt 2.9KG

Pale Malt 2.5KG

Wheat Malt 750G

Munich Malt 680G

Hops: Taurus 21G, 60 mins

Saaz 28g, 15 mins

Hallertauer Mittlefruh 33g, 15 mins

1.5 tsp Irish Moss, 15 mins

Wyeast “Kölsch” 4L starter.

Other Notes: .5 tsp Calcium Chloride, Calcium Sulphate added to filtered strike water. Mash at 65c for 60 minutes. Ferment at 17c, Lager at 7c (or whatever temperature it is in my shed in a week or so’s time!) for 3-4 weeks

A further note: the Taurus and the Hallertauer hops are my own homegrown ones, and as such I have no idea how bitter they are. I guessed 12% aa for the Taurus, and 4% aa for the Hallertauer. I suspect that even though that is the lower end of the guideline for Taurus, that they are not in fact that bitter. In any case hop bitterness is not the most important factor in a Kölsch, and I was only shooting for 25 bittering units.

Here are some pictures of the brewing process.

This is my mash vessel, a picnic cooler with a stainless steel false bottom. I fill the cooler with the grains and start to add the water, stiring as I go.

the temperature is 65c so I close the lid, cover with a blanket and leave it for 60 minutes. It lost about 2 or 3 degrees but that’s ok when the weather is cold.

I start to run off the liquid into the boiler. I have to recirculate the first couple of litres because they are usually a little grainy, the grain bed starts to act as a filter after a little while. When the liquid gets near the top of the grain bed I start to add more water, being careful not to disturb the grain bed itself, so I use a plastic lid to stop this happening. This is called “sparging” . I switch on the boil kettle which is a converted Keg. When it starts to boil, I add the first hops addition, in a muslin bag so they don’t clog up later. I add the other hops at 15 minutes to go, along with irish moss, a seaweed (not in fact moss) that clumps some of the protein molecules together that cause hazy beer, thus allowing for a clearer beer. It’s important to cool the liquid as quickly as possible once the boil is over, because it is unstable when hot and prone to oxidisation, picking up other bad or stale flavours, but worst of all, if it cools slowly it is far more likely to pick up airborne microbes and nasties that might spoil it. I use a copper coil that attaches to a hose, which cold tap water runs through acting as a heat exchange. This cools it down pretty quick. The cooler goes in the boil for 15 minutes before the end to sanitise it also. When it’s all cool enough I open the floodgates and it pours forth in a beery stream that would make your heart race. The plastic storage box is what I use these days as a primary fermenter, it has a capacity of 80L, which means plenty of headspace. It is made from food grade polypropylene, same as normal homebrew fermenters, but it was very cheap, and it’s see through so I can see all the action. This method also aerates the wort (the unfermented beer) which is very important, because although the whole yeast conversion is normally an anaerobic process, it does need oxygen to get started. All that frothing and pouring from a height is perfect for my purposes! 10 hours or so later, and it has already started to ferment, there are little bubbles exploding up from the bottom and shooting up to the top, where all the yeast eating the sugar and multiplying themselves cause the bear to have a frothy creamy head. It’s only getting started in this picture but now, a day or two later it is about 5cm thick. It smells fantastic. My yeast strain, Wyeast’s “Kölsch” is supposed to have an almost winey charater to it, but it should produce a fairly dry beer at the same time. I’ll just have to wait.

Christmas Ale ‘09

“It’s a mince-pie in a bottle”, I imagine my interlocutor saying, when he looks at the recipe for 09’s Christmas beer. Everyone needs a little tipple to warm them up at Christmas, and the other day I was sitting with friend and fellow brewer Peter, in Messrs Maguire, a Dublin Brewpub. They had a seasonal beer, called Juløl, or ‘Christmas beer’ in Scandinavian. I have to say I quite liked it, especially at €4 a pint. Peter wasn’t so sure, but overall the folks at ICB seem to enjoy it, there is a discussion thread here .  Anyway following my discussion in the pub, I decided my beer should be far more heavily spiced (because there’s nothing subtle about christmas), and a little stronger. Juløl is 6%, mine should be more like 8%. I thought I wouldn’t need the normal 35L batch, which is just as well, since a beer that strong would have a huge grain bill. I decided to just do a one step infusion mash, which is how some of the stronger belgians do it, like Westvleteren 12, at least according to my bible, “Brew Like a Monk”. That means I would just fill up the mash tun and drain once, with no sparge, only collecting the strongest first runnings. I was aiming for 19L.

The precise spices were chosen by my foodie girlfriend, who was excited about the spicing.  As you will see it is pretty much a mince pie, or as my cousin observed “it sounds like mulled wine”. Mulled beer I suppose. It’s no accident that we were celebrating the start of Advent with a Swedish friend (apparently it’s a big deal over there) by drinking large amounts of Glögg, which is mulled wine with the one massive structural defect corrected- the alcohol usually boils off mulled wine if you’re not careful, the Swedes dunk a shot of vodka or something similar in at the end to counteract this tragic loss.

One other element that adds to my mince-pie beer is the addition of pureed raisins. I took this idea from Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Être beer, there is a recipe for it in the latest (Dec 09) BYO magazine. There is a more in depth recipe in Sam Calagione’s book “Extreme Brewing”, although it is an extract only recipe. In any case the idea is you take a cup of wort from the boiler when you start the boil, add it to the raisins and blend them, re-adding the mixture 10 minutes from the end. I decided to hop not too heavily with EKG, and have no late addition, hoping that the spices will dominate the nose. I used Wyeast  ”Forbidden Fruit” as my yeast because spice and Belgian fruity yeast go together, also it has a higher alcohol tolerance. I mashed at 62c for 20 minutes, raising to 66c for 60 minutes with a boiling water addition. As it happens I only collected 13L of this, but that 13L had a gravity of  1.110, so I topped up to 18L, which should have a gravity of about 1.080, (you do the math[s]) which was my target. Here is the recipe

7KG Pale Ale Malt

500G Munich Malt

30G Amber Malt (Home Roasted)

70G Dark Roasted Malt (Home Roasted)

100G Roast Malt (Home Roasted)

250G Homemade Medium Candi Sugar, for colour, following Brew365’s method (10 minutes from end of boil)

200G Pureed Raisins (10 minutes from end of boil)

40G EKG 4.8 (60 minutes)

30G EKG 4.8 (20 minutes)

Cloves (7G, 10 minutes from end of boil)

Allspice Berries, Crushed lightly (15G, 10 minutes from end of boil)

Cinnamon (2 sticks, 10 minutes from end of boil)

Orange Peel (9G,  end of boil)

IBU is about 25. ABV should be around 8%

So between that and my Figgy Porter, I should be set for fireside festivities!

Stout: “Tar Water”

Stout: “Tar Water” bottled 20/11/09. A stout with belgian influences.

I finally got around to brewing a new stout a couple of weeks ago, which was based on a rather experimental idea that I had after reading some more of “brew like a monk”, or so I thought, but it turns out I didn’t get the idea there but from Michael Jackson’s site. The belgian beer Duvel uses yeast originally cultured from the scottish ale McEwans. “Brew like a Monk” says it is only one strain, but Michael Jackson gives the following account

The original McEwans symbiosis of strains has over the years been narrowed to two yeasts, and both are used in primary fermentation. The brew is divided into two separate batches, one for each yeast. These two batches are not of equal sizes. This procedure is just one of the many peculiarities that make Duvel such a distinctive beer.

So I was intrigued by the idea of splitting the batch, fermenting with separate yeasts and then recombining. Further inspiration came from the idea that Orval add some brett strain to their batches before bottling, which gives it the musty aftertaste. Furthermore I had read that some stouts including Guinness combine a soured portion to the main batch to give it a little bite. The Beernut told me that Guinness use something like lactic acid to achieve this effect now. Les Howarth answered a question I had on the ICB forum about mixing yeast strains, and also as it happens, wrote an interesting article for BYO on the subject. (BYO Dec 09 p46)

In any case, I brewed a stout, along the following lines.

5910g Pale Malt
870g Brown Malt (home roasted)
400g Oat Flakes
350g Roasted Barley (home roasted)
330g Black Malt
205g Wheat Flour
165g Amber Malt (home roasted)

64g EKG (4.8) 60 mins, 48g EKG 30 mins, 48g EKG 10 mins
(40 EBU)

28L, OG 1.064

I fermented 25L with Wyeast ‘Forbidden Fruit’ (4L starter), and the rest (3L) with some Orval yeast that I cultured from a bottle, it smelled quite bretty. The main part was fermented at 18c, the Orval portion slightly higher.  I recombined them when they both hit terminal gravity of 1.010. I let the whole thing sit for a day or two before bottling.

Preliminary tasting definitely has some brett character, which reminds me of some of my favourite stouts, and the sour character was something I had definitely been missing before. My stouts had been malty, and often had that roasty bitterness, but never the sour element. I hope that the taste will develop more with some conditioning, I understand that beers containing brettanomyces can undergo complex changes with time.

I called it “Tar Water”. The Irish philosopher George Berkeley in his later years wrote a treatise on Tar Water called “Siris: Philosophical reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising from one another” (1744) and “Further Thoughts on Tar-water” (1752). Tar water was a drink made from watered down pine sap, which is mildly antiseptic but which Berkeley hailed as a more general panacea. None of that has anything to do with my stout, but since I study philosophy in my non-brewing life, and have a fondness for Berkeley, I always thought “tar water” sounds like it might be a dark, rich brew. Furthermore I found a fantastically quotable passage in the introduction to serve as a recommendation of my drink:

“There are, nevertheless, three sorts of people to whom I would particularly recommend it: seafaring persons, ladies, and men of studious and sedentary lives”

Roast Malt

something I meant to do for quite a while was roast my own malt, so I finally gave it a go, and tried a few different things. A recent group buy with some of the folks on the ICB meant that I had bags of ale malt that only cost me about 85c per KG. Speciality malt on the HBC costs more like €4.50 per KG though. This means that if I make anything other than a blonde ale, my costs go way up. So I lined two baking trays with foil, and I set the oven at 100°c, for 30 minutes. This was the drying phase. I raised it to 175°c, for 40 minutes, for the roasting phase. Finally, I gave one tray 15 minutes at 200°c, and the other 45 minutes at 200°c. The one with less was to be a sort of amber malt,  the darker roast, I simply called… em, “roast malt”. You can see on the crush pictures how they compare to the original roast malt. 

I had one further idea. I have recently been roasting my own coffee beans from green, and although I used a popcorn popper for a while, as is popular among home roasters, I burnt out the motor one day by overloading it, so I reverted to the method I was originally using, which was quick and regular stirring in a wok over a gas flame. I decided to give that a go with the malt, in the hope of getting something dark like a chocolate malt. I used 300g, and I tossed them on a low heat, raising to medium after a while. All in all I woked them for about 25 minutes. The result was a wonderfully brown malt, which looked like chocolate malt, to me at least. It had quite a bitter roasty flavour when chewed. Here is a picture of it compared to some unroasted malt.

Roast malt, like home roasted coffee beans, require some time to develop their flavour. Apparently some of the harsher flavours dissipate during that time also. So I left the grain in some paper bags for a week or two before brewing with them.

I brewed what I called a harvest beer using this home roasted malt, and I bottled it this evening. I have had a few sneaky samples, and the maltiness is incredible. The smell is nutty and toasty, without being too bitter. The taste really comes through also. I don’t know whether this is the roast malt or the wok malt. I will be very interested to see how this fares after a few weeks in the bottle.

Bottling Belgian Beer

Back on july 12th I brewed a strong belgian beer, the idea was to bottle some of it in large champagne style bottles and cork it, and keep it for a while, as long as will power would allow. While they’re only half as big again as a normal bottle, there’s something very pleasing about having beer in large bottles like this, they feel much more substantial. they are very heavy. Most of the bottles I used were in fact proseco bottles and the like, as I don’t often get my hands on champagne. Get your friends and family to save them for you and you’ll build up a collection in no time. The reason for the heavier bottles is of course the pressure they have to withstand, which apparently wine bottles may not be able to take.

As regards corking, I agonised for ages over how best to do this, eventually settling on a normal wine cork from the home brew company. BYO recently did an article on corking belgians, but in it they swore that to use the slightly fatter belgian beer cork, available on Brouwland you needed a Colona capper, which is unavailable here. I have since found that that is untrue, I tried to push a belgian cork that had come from a bottle of lambic through the wing capper and it was no problem at all. It barely took any more effort than the smaller cork.

Anyway the beer I brewed was this

17L

5.5 KG pale ale malt

.5 KG belgian ’special b’

.2 KG aromatic malt

.2 KG biscuit malt

.1 KG crystal malt (ebc 120)

60g Hallertauer leaf hops 60 mins

500g Demerara sugar 10 mins

10g Coriander seed 5 mins

OG 1.078

Wyeast 3463 “forbidden fruit”

1 week in primary at 24c

2 weeks in secondary at 20c

FG 1.009

The fermentation was actually even higher initially, I pitched a lot of yeast since it was a high gravity beer, I used yeast slurry from a Witbeer that I had just completed. I pitched slightly warm, but it took off so quickly that it never cooled down! I ended up strapping some ice packs to the fermenter to get it down a few degrees from 26c! High fermentation is in keeping with this style however, so i wasn’t bothered. According to Stan Hieronymous, Westbvleteren 8 is picted at 20c but gets as high as 29c during fermentation (brew like a monk, p185)

So as you can see, I bottled this in the large ‘keeping’ bottles, and the rest in stubby 33cl bottles for earlier consumption. I primed with 85g glucose, for 16L (after 1L or so trub loss in racking) Corking was easy enough, I tried to leave 1cm or so of cork out, by releasing the clsping bits and pushing the cork out of the corker without pushing it into the bottle. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. You open these with a bottle opener anyway.

Once they were all in, I tied them with cotton string, like you see on prosecco bottles often. After a week or so they were all straining at the string but it held them. I made labels from a picture of a strongman I found.

Because I used the smaller wine cork on larger openings, some of them leaked ever so slightly, with syruppy drops appearing here and there. These were mostly the belgian bottles that I had recycled from real belgian beers. A week or so ago I opened the worst looking one, since I was worried that it would be flat, but despite it looking like it had leaked, the beer inside was perfect and still fizzy, so I’m not worrying about the rest.

I think the lesson I have learned is that the best method may be to only keep the cap-able bottles, the ones with a ‘lip’ that can take the larger crown cap. I will buy a bench capper that has a replaceable capping cup, and some champagne size crown caps. Then it shouldn’t mapper what size cork I use. I opened a large bottle of Saison de Pipaix recently, and it seemed to only have a normal size cork, but the cap was an extra barrier that meant the cork stayed in and the whole thing couldn’t leak. These bottles are stored on their side and I will keep them at least a year… at least some of them.

Strong Belgian Ale

Back on July 12th I was getting pretty excited about my holiday (incorporating belgium), and so I brewed a strong Belgian beer, the idea was to bottle some of it in large champagne style bottles and cork it, and keep it for a while, as long as will power would allow. While they’re only half as big again as a normal bottle, there’s something very pleasing about having beer in large bottles like this, they feel much more substantial. they are very heavy.

Bottles Drying

Most of the bottles I used were in fact prosecco bottles and the like, as I don’t often get my hands on champagne. Get your friends and family to save them for you and you’ll build up a collection in no time. The reason for the heavier bottles is of course the pressure they have to withstand, which apparently wine bottles may not be able to take. They also need thicker necks for taking thicker corks apparently.

Equipment

As regards corking, I agonised for ages over how best to do this, eventually settling on a normal wine cork from the home brew company. BYO recently did an article on corking Belgians, but in it they swore that to use the slightly fatter Belgian beer cork, available on Brouwland you needed a Colona capper, which is unavailable here. I have since found that that is untrue, I tried to push a Belgian cork that had come from a bottle of lambic through the wing capper and it was no problem at all. It barely took any more effort than the smaller cork.

Anyway the beer I brewed was this

17L  "Strong Belgian"
5.5 KG pale ale malt
.5 KG belgian 'special b'
.2 KG aromatic malt
.2 KG biscuit malt
.1 KG crystal malt (ebc 120)

60g Hallertauer leaf hops 60 mins
500g Demerara sugar 10 mins
10g Coriander seed 5 mins

OG 1.078
Wyeast 3463 "forbidden fruit"

1 week in primary at 24c
2 weeks in secondary at 20c

FG 1.009      approx 9% abv

The fermentation was actually even higher initially, I pitched a lot of yeast since it was a high gravity beer, I used yeast slurry from a Witbeer that I had just completed. I pitched slightly warm, but it took off so quickly that it never cooled down! I ended up strapping some ice packs to the fermenter to get it down a few degrees from 26c! High fermentation is in keeping with this style however, so i wasn’t bothered. According to Stan Hieronymous, Westbvleteren 8 is pitched at 20c but gets as high as 29c during fermentation (brew like a monk, p185)

The Belgian Collection

So as you can see, I bottled this in the large ‘keeping’ bottles, and the rest in stubby 33cl bottles for earlier consumption. I primed with 85g glucose, for 16L (after 1L or so trub loss in racking) Corking was easy enough, I tried to leave 1cm or so of cork out, by releasing the clasping bits and pushing the cork out of the corker without pushing it into the bottle. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. You open these with a bottle opener anyway.

Once they were all in, I tied them with cotton string, like you see on prosecco bottles often. After a week or so they were all straining at the string but it held them. I made labels from a picture of a strongman I found.

Prosecco style tie

Because I used the smaller wine cork on larger openings, some of them leaked ever so slightly, with syrupy drops appearing here and there. These were mostly the Belgian bottles that I had recycled from real belgian beers. A week or so ago I opened the worst looking one, since I was worried that it would be flat, but despite it looking like it had leaked, the beer inside was perfect and still fizzy, so I’m not worrying about the rest.

I think the lesson I have learned is that the best method may be to only keep the cap-able bottles, the ones with a ‘lip’ that can take the larger crown cap. I will buy a bench capper that has a replaceable capping cup, and some champagne size crown caps. Then it shouldn’t matter what size cork I use. I opened a large bottle of Saison de Pipaix recently, and it seemed to only have a normal size cork, but the cap was an extra barrier that meant the cork stayed in and the whole thing couldn’t leak. These bottles are stored on their side and I will keep them at least a year… at least some of them.

False Bottom

Not the latest fad from the plastic surgeon, but rather a device for efficient lautering (draining) of the grain bed. Up until now in my brewing I have been using a small coolerbox, the argos type, 24L I think. And it has served me well, but everyone knows that home brewing is like an arms race that you run against yourself, or perhaps your daydreaming imagination. In any case, I recently bought a Coleman 48 quart (45L) coolbox, and I decided I would up the lautering device to match. I had been using a simple copper manifold, but I though that what I now needed was a full stainless steel (= shiny) perforated false bottom, like this one.

First port of call was Ebay, where I bought a sheet of perforated stainless steel, 1.5mm thick, with 3mm holes. I am still slightly concerned that 3mm is slightly too big, but I have confidence that the grain bed will act as a reasonable filter.

I decided that the false bottom would have a centre ridge, 7cm from the bottom, sloping on either side down to the edges. I had been worried that 1.5mm would need extra support, but it’s no problem, the whole thing is perfectly stiff and rigid. I would leave triangular ‘tabs’ at either end to fold down to create the ends, as you can see from the plan I drew out on the sheet. Figuring out the dimensions from the size of the floor of the cooler was a simple matter of applying Pythagoras’ theorem.

I initially tried to cut this with a jigsaw, first on a high speed, then on a low (after reading metal should be cut on low), but to no avail. I burned through several blades before resorting to the angle grinder. I don’t know why I didn’t in the first place, I think the angle grinder scares me, it is brutish and aggressive. It sliced through the sheet like a hot knife through butter though. 10 minutes later I had the cut out sheet, waiting to be bent.

1.5mm steel doesn’t actually bend that easily, and I tried a couple of methods, eventually settling on a kind of sandwich-clamp affair. Clamping some wood on either side of the line allows you to slowly put pressure on the steel and get an even bend along the line. Towards the edge it kind of flared out a bit, but this was easily remedied by holding it in a vice and giving it a few bashes with a hammer.

For the centre, I clamped scrap wood on either side of the centre line, and kneeled on one side while I pulled the other towards me, which worked well. Here are some pictures of the bending process and the finished bend.

Once the bend was finished, I realised I’d need a hole for the brass threaded tube that forms the back of the bulkhead (tap) to fit through. The idea was that some tubing would sit roughly in the middle of the floor under the false bottom to act as pickup, and the screen would have a hole that sat over the tube and the brass. I cut it with my dremel, going through about 3 of those little disks, and it’s not pretty, but hey, I’m not a metalworker.

Once all that was done, I checked to see if it fit, which it did. I ‘tied’ the ends together with a small piece of wire, just to keep the ends tight together, since there would be a gap where grain could get through at either end. I also thought that it would be a good idea to put some tubing, the same as the beer line that we normally use for siphoning etc. around the edges, for two reasons. Firstly, even though I had ground off  the sharp edges with the grinder, because it was perf sheet it was still quite jagged. Secondly, I thought the rubbery ‘cushion’ would ensure that there was a snug fit between the false bottom and the base of the cooler, important to stop particles getting into the wort. I sliced some old tubing open with a scissors, and attached it using little plastic cable ties. Here is the finished product. I will post its efficiency as soon as I test it.

Coco-Porter, Figgy Porter

Some weeks ago I brewed the following porter:

4kg Pale Ale Malt
500g Chocolate Malt (800 EBC)
500g Amber Malt
500g Crystal Malt
25g Simcoe Pellets (60 mins)
25g Saaz Whole (20 mins)
290g Demerrera sugar (20 mins)
1 tsp Carrageen (10 mins)

Mash with 18L , sparge with 15. 60 minute mash at 64°.

OG was 1.064, with about 19L collected

Ringwood Wyeast yeast starter

slightly less wort than expected, but I’m still getting used to the new boiler. My plan for this porter was that it would serve as a base for a chocolate beer, so when primary fermentation seemed to have wound down, I racked 5L of it into a mini demijon, on top of some cocoa. I had read somewhere that secondary would work with the cocoa because it didn’t contain any fats or oils, which would normally need to be boiled off vigorously, or they will destroy the beer’s head retention. I also read that an alcoholic (i.e. post fermentation) liquid would take up the flavour better. The hydrometer sample tasted great. Very rich, just as I wanted. I used 30g of Green and Black’s cocoa, dissolved in some water and pasteurised (70° for 15 mins or so).

Some days later I decided to try something I was meaning to do for some time. There is a fig tree (yes, in north county Dublin) in my Parents’ garden that produces lovely figs, so I decided to rack the rest of the porter onto a figgy purée, which should be nice and mature in time for Christmas. Now bring us the figgy porter! We won’t go until we get some!

I picked about 4 or 5 figs I think, in any case they weighed 330g (the remaining amount of porter was 13.5L) . I chucked the whole lot in the blender, with a little water to thin it all out, and whizzed it up good and proper. I read some places that it might be a good idea at this point to freeze it, which breaks up the structure of the fig, but I figured they were pretty mashed up already. I simmered this lot at 70° for 15 or 20 minutes so that there were no wee nasty beasties left to disrupt my orderly fermentation. I racked the rest of the porter in on top of it and the brothers porter are conditioning side by side, happy as Larry. The gravity when racking was 1.016, making the Porter about 6%, if no further fermentation occurs. This choco beer incidentally will be the one I bring to the Temple Bar Chocolate festival. The Figgy porter on the other hand, will warm me in mid November as I lament my birthday and inescapable mortality.

De Hoppepluk

First Post, first hop harvest

Welcome to the blog! My first post is to record a happy, hoppy event, my first hop harvest! I recently returned from a holiday in Belgium and France, where I gazed at the hopfields that surround Poperinge. Not surprisingly the area is home to several excellent breweries, including St. Bernardus and Van Eecke in Watou, and of course the iconic St Sixtus abbey where Westvleteren is produced.

Poperinge has a hop museum, where I found this postcard. I was amused to learn that the flemish for the hop harvest is “De Hoppepluk”, and the harvesters themselves are referred to as, you’ve guessed it, hoppeplukkers! I returned home to see my own pride and joy, my Fuggles bine which had grown so impressively all summer in full flower. Several weeks later and I decided that it was time for my very own hoppepluk.  Here I am, intrepidly scaling the bine.

This being a test run, I decided to collect only some of the flowers. I was not entirely sure that they were ready. The guidelines I had found in various places recommend that the flower should not stay compressed when squeezed. Check. They should feel drier than young cones, even papery. Check. They should perhaps be browning around the edges. Check. Lupulin (the yellow powder that causes the bitter taste and smell of hops) should be apparent. check! So off I went. I guess that I took about a quarter of the largest flowers off the bine, mostly around the top. These were being battered the worst by our windy weather lately in any case, so I thought better off than on. One other issue was that my Tettnang bine, which is new in this year had made a very close acquaintance with Mr. Fuggles, so I’m not sure there aren’t some Tettnanger interlopers in there too. I tried to stick to the other side of the plant though. This is how much I harvested. When I removed all the flowers that little 5L bucket was about half full. I was very happy with the yield of the Fuggles bine this year, since last year it only grew about 4 ft, and produced nothing. I got it in the ground too late. This spring it started sprouting in early march, I think, and grew voraciously. Apparently next year will be even better. I read that the first year a plant produces only 30% of its potential, while year two gives more like 70%. I have some German varieties (Halltertauer, Taurus, Norther Brewer) that were new this year from Eickelmann which have produced a good cluster of flowers near the top. When the hop is picked I think it is about 70% or more water, and this should be dried down to 10% or so before storing, or mould may set in. I considered building an oast, and I may next year, but after extensive (30 mins) testing I decided my oven was up to the job, since on the lowest fan setting it can hold 35°c . I read that some commercial oasts use more like 60°c, so I decided to go with 45°c.

I used baking cooling racks, which were actually slightly too large, the smaller hops kept slipping through. I think Hessian sheets or some other coarse material might be better in future. They dried overnight, about 17 hours in all, which may have been a little too much, as they were quite brittle. I think I will go with less time or a lower temperature next time. When I weighed them there were 55 grams. I put them in two ziploc bags, and squished the air out by placing the bags under a large book (times atlas) and pressing down hard, then zipping while all the air was out. almost as good as a vac pac!

Here are some more pictures of the final dry yield from my first dry pickings, my hop-squishing method, and the finished package, which I popped in the freezer.

And finally, a pic of the lupulin that was left behind! It’s the yellow powder you can see on the bucket. When you rub or touch it it gets all resinous. Of course I couldn’t resist licking it off my fingers. Euuuuuugggggh, I still shudder to think how bitter it was. It was very, very bitter. But strangely refreshing! Hops are a bitter bitter sweet addiction.