The Champagne of Blogs

We took a few days away from the gloom and gray of Portland and headed over to visit some friends in Sun Valley, Idaho. Since lift tickets at the mountain are so outrageously expensive ($79!), we mostly stowed a few bottles in the snow rather than buy at the lodge. However, on our last day, we went nordic skiing at Galena Lodge north of town and found some delicious beer: River Bend Brewing.

Granted, any beer after XC skiing is pretty amazing. But the stout and pale were especially delicious. Smoky and chocolatey, and just a hint of sweetness made sipping the stout on the deck of Galena Lodge a highlight of my trip.

The best part is that Chris, the brewer, apparently decides which establishments in this tony valley may serve his beer. And when he’s got a keg ready, he throws it in the trailer of his bicycle to deliver it (except to Galena Lodge, because it’s like 25 miles out of Ketchum).

After skiing, we headed over the Galena Pass to Stanley, where we hopped in an Idaho hot tub next to the Salmon River, drank our beers, and watched a bald eagle swoop past and nestle into some trees.

Hanging out at Dave’s on the Fourth of July, it’s always too hot and too sunny. The best refuge? Under the cool and shady pergola covered in hops. And this past summer, when the missus and I went looking to buy our first house, a sunny spot for growing hops was on my short-list of must-haves. Also on that list: roof and walls. Growing hops has been somewhat of a dream since I first started brewing.

I read up on growing hops with a few books from the library, including:

Homebrewer’s Garden by Joe and Dennis Fisher
Homegrown Hops by David R. Beach

And basically what I learned was this: It needs to be sunny, it needs to be moist. Also, I learned that hops are grown from rhizomes, which are roots that start to spread out a bit over the years. My neighbors, God love ‘em, were excited by my hop farming, but not at all at the prospect of little hop bines (vine shoots) popping up in their yard every spring.

To constrain the underground colonization of the hope, I decided on raised beds for the hops. And since our backyard is going to turn into a shady courtyard, I put ‘em up front, on the northern flank to take full advantage of the southern sun.

There were some other planning considerations, shared here because I’m growing these near my home rather than in a proper, rural hop yard.

• Hops come down in the winter. Noted because we wanted to grow the hops along a yet-to-be-built front fence. The missus wanted something evergreen on the front fence, so the hop fence was scratched.
• Because hops come down in the winter and a naked trellis looks lame in the front yard, I’m building a removable bamboo trellis (more on that in the next post sometime… “soon.”)
• And finally, yes, hops come down in the winter. And an empty raised bed in the front of the house looks really lame. So I built terraced raised beds so we can have other plants. As well, we’ll plant in the ground around the raised beds.

Here’s Amanda’s sketch of the terraced beds. I wanted three beds, but it was her idea to turn them 45 degrees and make it a single structure. Pretty damn cool, in my estimation.

The next step was figuring out how the damn thing would be built. I am the least mechanically inclined man in America, so this was no small feat. Basically, I used tracing paper over some grid paper to figure out about how the boards should line up to give it sort of an overlapped-look. If you look closely, you’ll see little tails coming off each board. That’s how I kept the overlapped thing straight. I suppose I could’ve mitered it, but I don’t have a chop saw and, again, I am an idiot when it comes to building things.

So basically, I built a three-tier raised bed. I bought 2×6 cedar in 10 foot lengths. The plan is based on a 2.5 foot box, so the 10 foot lengths let us rip in basically four lengths: 30 inches, 60 inches, 90 inches and 28.5 inches. You’ll see a cut list next to each tier. Note, however, the top tier ended up with two little defects:

We basically just nailed some scrap 2×2 posts to keep that top, middle corner (front and back) attached. Duh. Pretty? No. But it’s still standing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After ripping the cedar, we laid the thing up in the garage to make sure it would actually fit together. It did.

That was enough for one day.

Sunday, I got up and measured out the spot in the yard, and I dug up the sod. Sod is surprisingly heavy if you’ve never moved it.

After that, I started nailing the boards together. The first tier went very quickly. I would recommend two things after nailing together the first tier.

1: Add the posts. Add as many posts as you’d like. This will help keep your raised beds square. If you don’t, and you just try to lay the second tier on top, you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking you messed up the measurements. You didn’t. It’s just not square. Trust me on this.

2: Carry your bottom tier into the yard, and make sure it fits in the hole you cut in the sod. Make adjustments as necessary so that it lays flat.

After that, go to town. I considered using screws, and probably would next time if I had better gear. But instead, I used galvanized patio nails. They won’t rust, and they have a little twist to them to keep them in place. I also used a few Simpson brackets to reinforce where one board met another at a perpendicular angle.

In hindsight, I should’ve put posts at every corner. I didn’t. We’ll see how that goes.

But soon enough, bada-boom, bada-bing, it was done.

The next weekend, we took Dave’s truck to buy 1.5 cubic yards of top soil mix (which included sand for drainage). We unloaded it into the beds, along with some extra mushroom compost our neighbors bought. Important safety note: when the soil dudes dump 2 yards of rotten manure into your truck, roll up your windows or you risk a mouthful of awful.

While at Steinbart’s to get the rhizomes, I must’ve gone back and forth from the freezer to the checkout stand 10 times. I could not make a decision on which three varieties I wanted. Ultimately, FINALLY, I settled on Willamette, Cascade, and Magnum.

I soaked the ground, then planted them. That was last weekend. I’ve been in Idaho since then, but I’ll assume nothing’s happened yet. Next job? Bamboo ladders for the hops to climb, as well as the attachments to the bed.

Update: See the homegrown hops and the fresh hop ale recipe in a very, very delayed post. You’ll also find some hop growing tips in a different post.

I’m in Louisville, Kentucky on business, a city better known as the capital of bourbon whiskey. Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, Woodford Reserve (the Derby bourbon) are all distilleries that call my old Kentucky home. Many’s the restaurant I’ve passed in the last few days touting a bourbon menu, with selections sometimes numbering the upper 50’s. That’s a serious whiskey selection.

So it was with no small amount of surprise that I found a beer temple here in the Bluegrass Brewing Company, a small brewpub with multiple locations in the area. I visited the downtown location with my co-worker Christi, and we had a nice time sampling a few brews and eating a very respectable bar food dinner. We brought a little rain with us from Portland, but the warm weather drew us outside to sit under the awning at the outdoor bar.

I sampled two of their beers, starting with the Dark Star Porter, whose stats were listed in the beer menu at 35 IBUs and 5.6 abv. The description provided described it as smooth, malty and chocolate-y, and I’ll give them 1 of 3. I found it good, but it was quite dry and almost astringent, but with nice toasty grain flavors and a pretty hearty mouthfeel. It also tasted quite a bit hoppier than its bitterness pricetag would seem to indicate, with some Eurohop flavors coming through in the finish – perhaps some Saaz in the recipe?

I enjoyed their “APA” much more, which for them is short for “American Pale Ale,” but I’d categorize it more in the IPA family, with strong resiny hop flavors and aroma. It was a bit sweetish and somewhat syrupy, but with agressive carbonation that may have also been present in the porter (and which led to my overly dry diagnosis). As the beer warmed, I also caught a strange aroma I’ve never noticed in a beer before, one I can best describe as Brie cheese rind aroma. Not unpleasant, but not something I’d want to wear as a cologne, either.

While we sipped beers outside, several patrons participated in what seems to me was probably the world’s quietest jam session, playing the kind of bluegrass you might expect to hear in the library, not a Louisville beer bar.

The bar had a very friendly vibe overall, with most patrons calling/yelling/sassing the bartender (”Gordo”) by name, buying him the occasional Jager shot, and chatting/yelling/drawling amiably with one another across the bar. One friendly local came outside for a smoke to visit (rhetorical: what does it mean when the highest tobacco producing state in the country bans smoking in bars, but Portland, Oregon, the country’s greenest city still allows it?) and regaled us with several hilarious stories, the best of which was his alleged occupation as owner of an Indiana bar/gun range. The gun range is attached. To the bar. I’m fairly certain the OLCC doesn’t allow that sort of thing, but I can’t be sure. Still, he assured me that official policy is shoot first, drink later, but that he couldn’t say that the rule was followed 100% of the time. Word to the wise: suit up if you head out for drinks in southern Indiana.

Bluegrass Brewing Company
660 South 4th Street
Louisville, KY 40202
(502) 568-2224

Tip #1: Do not leave your carboy filled with soapy water outdoors for two months.

Especially if those two months are January and February.