Hop Spider

Sometimes I wonder why I started brewing when I look at how crazy I am with having to be exact with almost everything. One of the things I'm trying to work on now is knowing exactly how much water I need to use to mash, sparge, trub waste, absorption, evaportation, shrinkage, etc to get exactly 5 gallons in my fermenter. I've build a spreadsheet to track each brew day so I can refine the process.  I know I'm not a pro brewer and I should maybe chill out a little, but I love to keep stats and to perfect a process.

Another part about accounting for hop matter is that I harvest my yeast to save money. If hop matter gets into the fermenter then there is likely hop matter in the yeast cake. The more "junk" in the yeast cake......blah blah blah.

So as part of my wanting to nail my water volume as well as having a cleaner yeast cake, I want to limit the amount of hop matter that makes it into the fermenter. I have been straining and trying leaving trub behind, but I need to account for that water lose and I'm still getting some hop material.

To take care of the hops, I've decided to build a Hop Spider. I take zero credit for the idea or the build. I saw an article in the December 2011 issues of BYO written by John Brooke. I'm not going to repeat any of the process because you can get the article online. Click here for the article on BYO.COM.

I'm using it for the first time tomorrow. Hopefully it works!

Hop Season 2012 Underway!

The 2012 hops growing season is officially underway. The constant rain and highs in the mid 70s for almost a week now has allowed all 4 varieties of hops to break ground. The Casacade definitely has the best head start with the US Tettnang not far behind. The Mt. Hood and Willamette are just barely showing their eyes. I'm very excited for this season as it is year two. I'm so hopeful that I will get my first cone as last year I had a ton of foliage but no cones. Here's to a great growing season!