All 34.9 pounds of ingredients, gadgets, and equipment are set to arrive to my house on Vashon Island today. I’ll be anxious to get home from work tonight! Video sure to come, as well.
Brewing at least one of two batches I bought this weekend. Nice to have flexibility with when I’m ready to brew the second. I also need to get my breakfast stout bottled up.
Ordered 12 hop rhizomes this morning from Bader Brewing in Vancouver WA (my first LHBS). I bought one of each variety. There are several c’s in there, by far my favorite. I had ordered 3 from Steve last year, they did great! I harvested an entire gallon Ziplock bag of Fuggles last year, it was amazing. Beautiful plants, easy to grow, and a great end product – hops!
Here are my baby Fuggles as of late April 2009:
And before you know it, time to harvest! Late August 2009:
I’m already planning a much more elaborate scaffolding for the hops this year. One big lesson from ’09 was that they LOVE sun. My Fuggles did the best because they had the most sun, my Cascade did the poorest because it got the least sun (but had the richest soil since it was down by the garden). I harvested about a quart-sized Ziplock bag of Centennials last summer.
If you’ve never grown hops before, I highly encourage you to buy a couple of rhizomes (roots) from a homebrew supplier, stick them in the ground and watch nature work her magic. It was thrilling to watch them climb up and up, very fast too! Some days you felt like you could just sit and watch them grow. They say they do best after 3 years so the 3 I planted last year should do even better in 2010.
