Salud from Nevada

[Kegcowboy]

Welcome - would love to be in Carson City right about now!

 

[TheHopRanger]

I think transplanting might be unavoidable. A line of some sort between buildings might be your best option at this point. However you might want to move half now and once the rhizomes that have been transplanted establish themselves which should be about a year move the other half perhaps even to your home for ease of harvest and care.

What kind of flavor profile were you going to shoot for with the Jameson red?

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Yah. I'll try that.

Good question actually. I think we were more just morbidly curious to see what happens. I think we'll just put the Jameson into our glass first to see if it's even a good idea. Mostly just trying to mix Irish with more Irish.

 

[TheHopRanger]

That's what homebrewing is all about experimenting and having fun doing it.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Oh yah, I forgot to ask, what kind of cherries did you use in the Marzen? Did you add any cherry extract?

 

[TheHopRanger]

I used 3.5 lbs of fresh cherries that I mashed the hell out of and steeped them at the end of the boil for 15 minutes. My girlfriend's mom has a cherry tree that is an epic cherry producer. Sometime I might attempt a lambic with some. Unfortunately I can't this year but next year I can probably hook you up with as many as you would like

 

[TheHopRanger]

Your supposed to use 1 pound of fruit for every gallon of water but I wanted the cherry flavor to be subtle. How's the IPA doin?

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Hey Nevada folkals. Any of you used Honey in your brews? What about as a carbonation primer? Any tips or tricks on how to make a "heavy" honey note without being over the top?

Also, HopRanger, I had my first Marzen yesterday. It was AWESOME. I can't wait to make our own now.

 

[TheHopRanger]

I actually try to keep a honey lager onhand it is extremely easy to make and really good too. I use 2.5 lbs of honey, 3 lbs of light dme and a pound of crystal 40. I try to use a lower alpha hop so the flavor of the honey comes through.

Just made a dubbel and bottled the toasted apricot oatmeal stout which is AMAZING!! Should be moving the ESB to a carboy in the next couple of days. The vienna lager will be bottled in a couple of days. Bottled the doppelbock 8-10 days ago. Up next my xmas beer for which I'm still trying to iron some things out and my flanders brown.

Happy to hear you had the chance to try a marzen.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Damn, you are beer making machine!

This month we're making 3 beers, possibly four.

We'll be making an Irish Red Ale tomorrow (Just Brew It's recipe), a Scottish Light Ale, a Honey Wheat Ale (strongly considering doing a decoction on that one after reading up on it to help along the wheat, but it depends which type of Wheat Ale we choose). And someone gave us an English Pale Ale kit, so I think we'll Wet Hop that with our new friends for funzies (and to figure out wtf they are).

So we need another fermenter to pull all of that off. And I think we'll go through all 200 of our bottles. So it's time to start collecting more.

 

[TheHopRanger]

I've tried to make a beer a week for the last couple of months. The only bummer is I have a bunch of beer bottled but not much of it is ready to drink.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Hey Hop Ranger.

So, I've got a question for you, should be easy.

Our hops farm is about to get bigger. We need to take apart the entire telles system and everything the previous owner set up because it simply sucks.

Should we replace it with a Pyramid trelles (one spike, with bines crawling diagonally upward) or a trolley trelles. Both of these will be in the open air with no building, just lines and stakes. We have tons of space. I'm thinking of growing three varieties. 3 bines each.

Btw, how much does a good full-sized bine yield?

 

[TheHopRanger]

I would go with a pyramid style trellis. You could potentially get a yield of 18-30ish pounds of wet hops per bine. From what I've read a 5 gallon bucket full of hop cones is about 3-5lbs of wet hops.

My Dubbel is bubbling away and smells fantastic!! And the ESB is going to be hands down the best beer I've made.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

Damn, that's a lot. Probably only need one rhizome of each type of hops then. No way we'd make that much beer even in a year unless we opened a brewery. Which is not off the table...

Which varieties do you have? If I were to,,say,,,,share them, what do you think would be good? I'm thinking Goldings and Warrior

Our Irish Red Ale is at home now, I haven't gotten to check if it's bubbling or not, I've been in Tahoe all weekend.

 

[TheHopRanger]

Now remember when you move them your yield isn't going to be that much.

Before the dog decided to eat at the hop buffet I had Glacier, Magnum, Centennial and Cascade. Next year when Trevor gets rhizomes back I'm going to try again. I really want Glacier, Centennial, Hersbrucker and Galena since I use those the most.

I'm a big fan of Goldings, the Warrior would be a good option as IPA's and bigger beers such as Imperial Stouts and Porters are growing in popularity. Have you indentified the hops you have yet?

 

[CmdrTrekk]

I read that a dog could die from eating hops, is yours okay? Be careful!

99% sure it's cascade. It has the grassy rough smell of Cascade.

I'm okay with the low yield, no biggie.

I'm thinking Cascade, Warrior (maybe), Goldings, Perle. I used perle in my chocolate stout, it was amazing.

I've written up the math for a basic pyramid trellis that can start with support for 4 bines but because of how spread out it is (50ft diameter), it'll have space for up to 20 bines or so. Don't think we'll ever need that many but who knows. It's easily expandable and disassembles for harvesting. Also will make it easier to irrigate.

 

[TheHopRanger]

The dog is fine he ate them months ago.

If your thinking of giving them away? Selling some? Cascade would definitely be a great choice.

A low yield isn't a bad thing since a couple pounds of hops is a ton of cones.

As you said earlier unless you plan on brewing on a ginormous scale I can't see you ever needing room for more than 4 bines.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

I honestly really dislike cascade in beer, so we'll probably sell those and use the others and then sell whatever is left of those too.

 

[TheHopRanger]

I'm not a huge fan of cascade my self but you can't hardly throw a dead cat without hitting an American beer that uses them.

Once the chickens go into full egg production maybe we can work something out for some of the other hops.

 

[CmdrTrekk]

I'm totally down with hops for eggs.

Agree with dead cats. At the Mammoth Blues and Brews Fest so many beers had cascade hops I felt like I was eating grass and I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth.

 

[TheHopRanger]

Sweet!! I'll let you know when the chickens start producing like they should.

I think I might feel different about cascade if they used less or in conjuction with another hop.

 

[TheHopRanger]

I forgot to mention my recipe for the flanders brown calls for oak chips in the secondary ala dry hopping so I decided to soak the chips in Famous Grouse 18yr. I'll let you know how that works out.