A successful night of brewing (without the brewing)

Thanks to everyone who came last night. We had a good crowd, in spite of the weather. The rain made it difficult to brew (we didn’t want any of Atlanta’s acid raid infecting our beers), so we actually just hung out and drank. It was amazing. We circled up a bunch of chairs and made some new friends. It was like middle school, but without the relentless ridicule.

I felt good about the beers, from the few sips I had. Expect an update on where our beers are from Jeff later in the week (Hint: Jeff, write something). And finally, a picture of our hops after a rainstorm:

Suck on that, Travis!

Homegrown Cascade

The hops have arrived! The first signs that our hop vines will have some kind of crop this year have surfaced over the past few days. It’s still not clear how much we’ll get this year, but it appears at the very least we’ll be able to have enough Cascade for dry-hopping a few batches of our Swashchuckler IPA.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Never have we been so infatuated with “the trellis”

Trel?lis. Noun.

1. A frame or structure of latticework; lattice.
2. A framework of this kind used as a support for growing vines or plants.
3. A frustrating necessity of growing hops.

The third definition is really hitting home. Fortunately we’re not the only ones dealing with this problem. And there are many potential solutions. Trouble is, we haven’t yet found one that pertains enough to our situation. Specifically, it can’t look like crap. And there’s nothing for it to lean on. And it has to be at a minimum 10-12 ft tall. But it can’t look like crap.

Any ideas?

Our hops love Jeff’s house

I realize this post has already lost a lot of its thunder, since this picture was taken a week ago. But GEEZ. Check out our hops! They’re growing like gangbusters, even after Joel tried to “water them” himself:

Holy hop farm, Batman!

Our hops are doing a LOT better this year, especially if you consider that they weren’t even in the ground until May last year. We transplanted them over at Jeff’s house earlier this spring, and I don’t know if he’s feeding them speed or X or something, but they’re really shooting out of the ground. Thus far the Cascades (pictured) have won the race.

My goal is to have a legitimate harvest this year. At LEAST… 3 TIMES AS BIG. And no more of this “Atlanta is in a drought” crap. Our hops don’t care. They’re thirsty.

Our hops are alive and kicking

Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t completely kill our hops last year. They’ve peeked their bitter little heads above the surface of their new home along Jeff’s driveway. And Jeff, the nurturer that he is, has been diligent in providing the little buggers with plenty of water. He’d give them extra sunlight if he could. What you see below is the first of our Cascade crop this year. We also have some Chinook and Willamette planted, which hopefully will be joining the party soon.

HopWatch: Year 2

We’re going to give this whole “growing hops thing” another go. Unruffled by our meager/nonexistent harvest last year, we have transplanted our hop plants to Jeff’s yard. Now they’re out of the pots, off of the volleyball court, and in the ground. We also fertilized with some composting spent grains which probably won’t make much of a difference but is still cool in theory. It’s early, and none of the hops have peaked out of the soil yet. I’m banking on April.