Summer hop picking

Coming off 6 weeks on the road this summer and pretty much jumping right into the busiest semester of doctoral study we've had so far has left me very short on time for keeping up to date here.  I've finally carved out a little time and plan to do a bit of catching up, starting with covering this season's hop harvest.

A dutiful friend kept the hops watered in my absence, and we returned to see them in fine form.  Following the trauma it endured last winter, the Goldings plant produced no cones this year; it was hard to tell at first, though, as the Centennial bines had grown over to the adjacent plot and set up shop there, producing .6 ounces dry all told.  The Willamettes took top honors as they have in the past, producing a bounty of sizable cones that came in at 1.6 ounces dry.

Ideally, I'd like to use these homegrown hops for a wet-hopped beer, but the timing simply didn't work out this time; it was getting late in the season when I finally picked them as it was.  Maybe next year I'll be able to plan out a brewday for when the hops are at their peak.

Speaking of wet hopping, I took part in a little communal hop picking for local brewpub Desert Edge in the latter part of August.  The brewers went out the day before to an undisclosed area of Parley's Canyon outside Salt Lake and cut garbage bags full of wild hop bines to use in an annual golden ale named Radius, for which all the ingredients are sourced within one hundred miles of the city.  Over the course of the day, the assembled civilian hop pickers harvested nineteen buckets of wet hops that went into this year's brew; I stayed on for about five hours, enjoying complimentary pours of house beers as we went.  It's not my favourite local brewpub, but as one finds in many situations, the beer's quality improved greatly when it became free.  In addition, the brewers held a pickers appreciation party about a month later, pouring complimentary Radius (and other house beers) for the assembled helpers and sending each one home with a hand-labeled bottle.  Apparently this year's batch wasn't as hop forward as it's been in the past, but it's certainly not an offensive brew; I still have my bottle, and have plans to crack it before it's sat for too long.  For anyone in the SLC area, I highly recommend taking part in this event next year; it's good fun with good people.