While getting the rest of some gardening ready this year, my wife noticed that the Mt. Hood hops that failed so miserably last year actually started growing again! They are taking off quite aggressively up the twine this year, so hopefully with a little luck and a lot of water, they will actually give me a few cones. My real goal with them was to have just enough to make a good harvest ale of some kind, so any extra will be considered gravy.

Once I get the yard cleaned up a little better, I will actually put some pictures up.

I’ve never actually made a beer that required a blow-off tube, but I recently received some German hefeweizen yeast from Allen in the Lakeside Brewers’ Guild, which he said would easily clog up a traditional airlock. Because the beer my wife made was still in my plastic primary fermenter, I decided to get really crazy and put this one directly into a carboy. After some logistical errors, spilling some of the wort on the kitchen floor, and a healthy amount of swearing at the cat, I finally got the Dungaree Dunkel in the carboy with Allen’s yeast pitched on top. He was not kidding at all. While I did not get spillage into the water trap, the kräusen definitely hit the blow-off tube, which tells me an airlock would have been a bad idea on this one. Here are a couple of the prettier pictures of the set-up and the kräusen:

Surprisingly, the tea kettle worked out well for a water trap. The lid on the spout made a perfect clamp for the tube that was not too tight to pinch it off, but keeps it firmly in place even with some accidental kicking.

As for the hops, which I have not mentioned in a while, the right side is growing like mad finally, but leftv2 is still a split stem and is not doing much of anything. My third rhizome in the big pink bucket has also neglected to send up any shoots. We have been getting some good rain, so I will snap a few more pictures in the days to come to post my progress.

It finally got hot outside, so it started to make me think about getting the trellises for the hops up. In about three hours and seventy dollars, I managed to get some trellises up that should support my meager hops bed. But I am getting ahead of myself, because I really should talk about the fact that some animal, natural disaster, or bad luck murdered the hops bine I have affectionately nicknamed “left”. I could not even bear to take a picture of it. I went out there to water them, and the bine was simply snapped in two at the base. Emergency measures were called upon, and I ordered another rhizome in case this one was finished. I could not find another Mt. Hood rhizome anywhere, so I ended up ordering a Brewers’ Gold again from Freshops. However, after checking on “left” again after a couple days, it turns out that it was not done fighting yet. One small bine that hadn’t budged since I planted it has suddenly shot to life and put out leaves. I have nicknamed it “leftv2″. I will have some pictures up of the progress of the bines soon, but for now, a couple pictures of the trellises themselves.

The trellises are eight-foot long two by twos that I pounded approximately one foot into the dirt. I secured them to my backyard fence with four-inch decking screws. The eyelets at the top are just #2 eyelets screwed into the side. I used coir twine to string down to the bines and secured the bottom of the twine with a metal spike to avoid too much blowing around. They are no Andy Sparks Trellises, but I think for my limited space they will do just fine.

Also, after a fifteen day primary fermentation, I bottled the Starched Wit witbier. It went from 1.043 down to 1.005, so I am looking forward to a nice, dry witbier in a couple weeks. I used DME for the priming sugar, which gives it a slight banana-ish flavor until the bottle conditioning is done, but the sample directly from the primary was delicious.

I have two more projects in mind for brewing now. The first will be the Irish Red Ale that I am taking to a brewing class I am giving in August. I have only been doing this a year, but it will be a year longer than anyone else at the class, so it should be informational for the neophyte and, of course, fun for me. The other project is doing an Oktoberfest style, but using bourbon-soaked oak chips in a long secondary bath. Neither one has a recipe ready to go yet, but they will be up in the brewing journal as soon as they solidify in my mind.

I finally got time to do some serious yard work, and to spare the rest of the details, I have the extra manure and mulch on the hops now. This should hopefully kill off the multitude of weeds that were quite obvious in previous pictures. The bines are still short, but look way better with the mulching done. Here they are, left and right again:

I also made a Witbier over the weekend from the Brewers’ Best Kits from LD Carlson. The Wit was their spring seasonal kit, and I’ve always wanted to try making one, so I started with the kit to see how it goes. As I opened the package, I noticed that there was a pound of base malt included with the kit. The directions said to steep the grains as usual at around 160-170 degrees F. I was not too thrilled about this prospect, so I did a partial mash instead. One pound of 2-row with half a pound each of flaked oats and flaked wheat went into my mash. I did a simple step mash with a protein rest and a single sacchrification rest. My big quandary was how to lauter this as I do not have any kind of gear for this. I ended up coming up with my own method, which has probably been done before, but I dubbed it teabag sparging. Because I mashed in a huge grain bag, I just lifted the whole thing onto my mash paddle and dunked it into the sparge water rather than pouring the water over it. I tasted my “second runnings” and definitely detected sugar coming off of it, so it seemed to work pretty well. If the name teabag sparging does not make you laugh, this picture will:

After a good five minute soak in the sparge water, I discarded the grain bag, poured it all together, and went on with my boil. I got bubbles in the fermenter only 12 hours after pitching, so I think this one will get through primary quickly.