Backyard Hop Crop Report, May 2015

Mt. Hoods last year

I had a bumper crop of hops last year, especially for first-year plants. I planted four rhizomes last year, two Mt. Hood and two Cascade. The Cascade were a little slow getting off the ground, but the Mt. Hood exploded. This was a little disappointing because Mt. Hood is a variant of German noble hops, not exactly known for being used in large quantities (though we'll see if my Bitter Pils To Swallow turns out well–it has 10 ounces). Cascade, on the other hand, has historically been the darling of the craft brewing industry, being used in massive quantities in late additions and dry hopping for IPAs, pale ales, CDAs, etc. If I was going to get too much of any hop, I'd rather the Cascades. Looks like this year might be more along those lines.

Kurtoberfest

Every year I've been brewing, I've made an Oktoberfest/Märzen. For those who don't know, the style is traditionally called "Märzen" because it is made in March, which you might have noticed is quite a while before Oktoberfest (which is, strangely, in September). This beer is a lager, which means it's fermented slow and cold, and then undergoes an extended period of lagering, which is fancy brewer talk for "cold storage". Lager comes from the German verb lagern meaning "to store". For this beer, the lagering is quite long. I never seem to have my act together in March, and this year I wasn't really ready until early May.

Bitter Pils To Swallow

Homegrown Mt. Hood hops.

It's Pilsner time. In fact, it might be late for Pilsner time. But I made one anyway, because my wife likes 'em, and because I don't know how else to get rid of all these Mt. Hood hops I grew last year. A friend of mine had asked me if I'd ever tried Firestone Walker's Hoppy Pils. I hadn't, but it sounded like fun. I threw together a recipe assuming about 4.5% alpha acids on my homegrown hops. If the beer winds up too bitter, well, I warned you, right? It's in the name. This is a Bitter Pils To Swallow.

May The Schwarzbier With You

I was dismayed to find out that I was the fourth person on Brewtoad to name a recipe "May The Schwarzbier With You". But not dismayed enough to change it. I brewed this back on November 9, because I was going to be out of town for all of December and wanted to take advantage of the time away to do some lagerin'. Lagerin' always goes better when you can't go check on the beer, or you forget about it (or both!).

In developing the recipe I consulted a couple of sources, but mainly went with splitting the difference between two of Jamil Zainasheff's recipes from Brewing Classic Styles. One he admitted was far too roasty, but still seemed to do well in competitions. The other was basically just a black pilsner. I've never been one for "It's just like this other thing, only a different color!", so I combined the two, in the hopes of taming the roastiness of the first recipe. Here's what I wound up with: