I took off work today and brewed up another batch of Earl’s Pale Ale. As I was measuring out the grains and water, I took another look at our hop plants out back and decided to go ahead and harvest what I could and use them in todays brew. We ended up getting 11 oz of fresh hops from 1 hop plant. We have 2, but only 1 really produced anything this year. I divided the hops into 2 additions, 1 for flavor, 1 for aroma. When using fresh hops, you need to account for all the water weight they hold, which is quite a bit. When substituting “wet” hops for dried hops, a 5:1 ratio needs to be used. So each 5-6 oz of wet hops is equal to about 1 oz of dried hops. We ended up with the equivalent of about 2 oz of dried or pellet hops from 1 plant. But these plants are only in their second season, so hopefully we will get more next year.
The hops seemed to filter the wort pretty well also when transferring it into the carboy. Tim came and helped out by picking hops and doing some of the heavy lifting for me. He also took some pretty nice pictures of the process as well.
I also tried a new hopping method that I hadn’t done before, first wort hopping. I had got all the ingredients to do Earl’s Pale Ale the same way as last time, and when I decided to use the fresh hops, I had to substitute them in somewhere. So, I took the Centennial hops that I had bought for aroma and used them as first wort hops. I put them in the kettle when I first started sparging. They steeped in the hot wort for about 30 minutes before the boil began. This method supposedly creates a smoother bitterness in the beer with more complex flavor. We’ll see how it turns out. I also was able to save the 1 oz of Cascade hop pellets that was to go in as flavoring hops, as I had enough fresh Cascades to use for flavor and aroma.
Freshly harvested hop ales are meant to be drank quickly to preserve all that fresh hop goodness, so I’m hoping that 2 weeks in the primary and a week carbonating in the keg will get this one ready fast. Here’s the full recipe.
Earl’s Fresh Hop Pale Ale
Malt
9.5 lbs Canadian 2-Row 0.75 oz Munich 1 lb Caramel 60L 1.25 lbs Caramel 20LHops
1 oz Centennial dry leaf (First Wort (FWH)) (10.3%AA) 1 oz Northern Brewer pellets (60 min) (9.9% AA) 5 oz Cascade fresh wet (25 min) (unknown AA) 1 oz Columbus pellet (10 min) (16.3%AA) 6 oz Cascade fresh wet (0 min) (unknown AA)Yeast
Wyeast American Ale 1056 (1L starter 48 hours)Steps
Mash 3.9 gal @ 152F for 60 min, Sparge 5.2 gal @ 170+F, add FWH at beginning of sparge to boil kettle Boil 60 min, hop schedule above Chill to 70F, pitch yeast starter after decanting most of extra starter wort Ferment at 60F for 2 weeks Transfer to keg and force carbonate to 2-2.5 volumes CO2 for 1 week
What's Brewing in Charlottesville? 