Brew Day

Over Labor Day weekend Sean finally brewed his first batch of beer since Griffin's arrival!  We harvested his hops the week before so Sean wanted to use them in this first batch.   This was the third year of growth for these hops and they were out of control!  I told Sean they reminded me of Jack and the Bean Stock, the hop cones were huge and the vine grew all the way up the house and even into our neighbors yard (oops!).

The three vines blended together!

We had three varieties of hops: Magnum, Centennial and Cascade but they grew so out of control we had no way of knowing which hop belonged to which vine, so we just threw them all together!



Proud of his harvest :)

Sean had the vines run up a string, so he just cut the string down and we carried the hops to the garage and began our harvest.  It took almost three hours to pick them and when we were done Sean and I smelled like hops and a little like it's cousin..weed.  Thankfully, Griffin took his afternoon nap during this time so we were able to get it all done before he woke up. This year's harvest totaled about 20 ounces of whole hops!



Hop stash

We bought a food saver/vacuum sealer at Costco so Sean could freeze and store our harvest.  It worked out great!  It looked suspiciously like a drug operation on our dining room with the electric scale and bagging system!

Mmmmm...hops!

In the spirit of keeping it simple Sean brewed up a pale ale, actually an "organic" pale ale!  He figured that since our hops were organic then he would buy all organic grain as well.  Yep, we are REAL health nuts over here! LOL!  He used about 4 or 5 ounces of our homegrown hops in the recipe so he still has enough hops for a couple more batches!

Brew day was fun, as it was Griffin's first real beer making experience.  Man, that kid really soaked it all up.  He is going to be brewing solo in no time..yeah right :) 

Watching his Papa brew up some magic!

It's a family affair!

Sean also built his own temperature regulated chest freezer for fermentation.  It's totally awesome and he saved a ton of money doing it himself.  He found instructions on YouTube on how to make your own temperature regulator, bought a used chest freezer on craigslist and put it all together.  He can now add "electrician" to his resume :)  It's cool because now we can brew lagers and he can regulate his ale fermentation better, instead on relying on the temperature in our house.  Very cool!  It will be ready to drink in a week or so, I'll let you know how it turned out!