Growing Hops in the Puyallup River Valley.

Hop planting season is fast approaching.  I have been mentally planning my garden, waiting for the frost danger to pass and the rhizomes to come into the LHBS.  The wife and I have already made a trip to the hardware store looking at trellises and purchasing seeds for our squash plants.  My reading for the train in the coming weeks will consist of Treatise on hop growing in Washington territory. 

Ezra Meeker is the founder of the town that I live.  He was a prolific hop farmer in his day and founded the town on hop farming.  He was once known as the King of Hops.  The hop lice disaster in the late 90's (Eighteen nineties that is)  destroyed the hops in the river valley and Meeker proclaimed the hop as being a fickle crop.  I will not hold out hope for a successful turnout this season.  With a little luck I may have a harvest pure enough to brew a pale with. 

Thinking of you Ezra. 

Inspiration

Stone Brewing

 

The Basics

  Building a brewing system:  Common equipment for all grain home brewing.

You don't need a bunch of laboratory equipment or huge copper kettles and fermentors to start brewing your own beer.  Almost all or your major equipment can be purchased online or from your local hardware store for relatively cheap.  Home brew shops are great places to browse, but if you are on a budget stick to buying your grain, hops, and yeast there and scrounge for your equipment elsewhere.

Stove: Porch type stove that folks use for crawdad boils and such; most use Bayou Classic brand. They are low priced and good quality. Starting around 40 bucks and run off the same propane tank as a grill. Some have natural gas option. Typically the higher the better. BTU (for faster heating) and off the ground (to spare you a backache and keep blowing leaves and jumping bugs out of your kettle if your brewing in the yard).

Kettle: 7 or 8 gallons is good for starting off. You can
brew a 5 gallon batch and also do higher gravity 5 gallon batches with boil off. Stainless steel is better than aluminium.  Stainless steel is also more expensive and heavier.  Some guys like to get old kegs and cut the tops off. 









Mash Tun/ Sparge Tank: 10 gallon cooler.  Round drink coolers are best.  This will give you the option of turning it into a lauter and mash combo.  A square soda cooler works fine also.  If you don't put a filtering system in you will just have to scoop the grain and hot wort into your lauter tun. 







Lauter Tun:  Two 7 gallon food grade buckets make a perfect lauter system.  Just drill one bucket bottom full of holes and insert into the other.  Charlie Papazian's book on brewing details this very well.  My experience shows that this lauter system does not work well for flaked grains, however, I don't think any system really would.  I just refuse to try and brew oatmeal anything.