Saturday, August 21, 2010

hops

Time to start finalizing the recipe for my fresh hop rhubarb braggot.


The one plant that did the best this year is really starting to fill up with cones. I'm pretty impressed with how well it did for a first year plant that I put in the ground in mid June. Of the other 4 plants I put in the ground this year, one has 15 cones, and another has only 5 0r 6, the last two didn't flower at all. This one's a champ. A good 6-8 feet of the bine is pretty heavily covered in cones.
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2 comments:

  1. Bill NightAugust 23, 2010 at 11:10 AM

    Oh man, you're not really going to waste fresh hops on a rhubarb honey beer? You're just pulling my leg, right?

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  2. pedXerAugust 23, 2010 at 1:04 PM

    Not pulling your leg, no!

    I've been making meads and ciders and rhubarb wine this whole past year, and I haven't made a hopped version yet. The idea for the rhubarb braggot is to get it pretty strong, yet dry enough to let some of the hops come through. To do that, I'd use honey for most of the sugars, with just enough malt to give it a little more flavor. I'd let the rhubarb do the bittering and add a little citrus flavor and then add the hops towards the end for flavor and aroma. I'm not really looking to showcase the freshness of the hops or anything, I just don't want to go through the trouble of drying them and storing them to make something later if I could just make a batch of something right off the bine and save some effort.

    I'm not a big fan of pales or IPA's much anymore, so I don't have too much of a desire to make a more traditional fresh hop style right now, plus the only plants that produced for me this year were willamettes, which I don't think would be particularly exciting for that anyway.

    Clearly, this could be a disaster, but I'm more interested in making experimental types of drinks that I haven't seen anywhere before than trying to replicate stuff I can just buy at the store. Plus I grew all the rhubarb and hops (or they grew themselves), so the cost is low enough to take a little risk with.

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