The End of Hops Season

The end of the hop season has come.  The bines were cut back, but the plants near the ground still remain.  I will trim and cover the rest in a couple of weeks.  I've even produced "My Hop Garden: Part 2."  This is the last installment of the video chronicle of the hop garden and what was done with it.  You can watch it here of go to my sites video page and watch Part 1 and 2 on the same page.

 

I've taken the hops and made a Fresh Hopped Brown Ale as I was discussing in a post in August.  I used the Hallertau for bittering and the Cascades for flavor in a dry hop and in a post fermentation Randall process for aroma. Keeping it all as fresh as possible.

The Randall is short for Randall the Enamel Animal first invented by Dogfish Head brewery.  This tool takes carbonated beer - sending it through a filter, which holds fresh hops rather than filter material.  As beer flows through the Randall it is infused with the fresh flavors of hops.  I used the same process but readied my beer for bottling by pushed my beer with a light 5 psi of CO2: through an orange carboy cap into the glass carboy, which pushed the beer up a racking cane, through a cartridge filter filled with the Cascade hops and into the bottling bucket where I had poured the priming syrup, gently stirred, bottled and capped the beer.

It's been aging in the bottles for a couple of weeks and it should be ready to test right now!