Tag: Bere

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Springtime!

Well, things are rolling around to springtime again, so it’s been out to the garden/field for me.  It looks as though my Maris Otter barley has survived the winter; with a few more sunny days, it should pop up fairly quickly.  My hops also appear to have survived, at least mostly: the Cascades and Willamettes are already full of shoots, and there appear to be at least a couple of shoots from the Sterlings and Magnums.  The “retired” Cascades are set to go berserk this year, as well.

As a bit of insurance, I ordered one of each type of rhizome this year from Midwest Supplies; they arrived earlier this week, and I got them into the ground yesterday.  The Sterlings and Magnums went to supplement last year’s, and the Cascade and Willamette went into new areas by a fence between my back yard and the “back field”.  I’ll let them climb on the fence, for this year, then put up poles for them in the fall, for next year.

I’ve got to say, also, if you’re going to order rhizomes, go through Midwest.  I’m not affiliated, yada yada; I’m just exceptionally happy with the rhizomes I got this year.  Last year’s, from another source, were kind of wimpy; they looked like they’d been out of the ground for a while, and might not have been viable.  (They’re hops, and tenacious; at least one of each variety survived long enough to put up shoots; I had deer problems…)  The ones this year were sizable, and had at least six or seven shoots  on each rhizome.  (The Magnums had probably a dozen, and the rhizome itself was thicker than my thumb!)  Yes, they’ll be establishing roots, this year, but I’m confident that if I can keep the critters away, they’ll be productive next year.

I also managed to sow my Bere, Hana, and Sprat barley, with another test-planting of volunteer wheat.  It’s year 3 for the Bere, so I’m reasonably confident in it; I hope to double my yield of Hana, this year–I might have gotten 50g from the 5g sown, last year.  This is year 1 for the Sprat; we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve got a few other things going plant-wise, right now, as well… New blackberry plants, in a location hopefully relatively safe from the deer.  I’ve got some hazelnut seedlings in, and hope to be able to “play” with those in a few years.  My apple trees are all budded out nicely, and the cherry trees are looking to follow suit–in a week or two, I expect the orchard area to be awash in white and pink petals.  Plans are afoot to get some beehives; their location is selected, and if things to go plan, I’ll get the bees next spring.  Things are moving along!

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Malting, The Next Adventure

So, after almost twenty years (!) of working on the brewing art, I’ve decided to step up my game, and go to the next level: malting.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m now in the process of growing my own grains. This is year two; my total harvest, from less than 120sqft of seed sown, is probably about twelve pounds.  Not much–but not bad, when you consider that I started from just over an ounce total from four varieties of “heirloom” seed (Hana, Bere, Maris Otter, and Halcyon), and added in about a quarter pound of modern commercial seed (Conlon) last year.

I’ve combined the Maris Otter and Halcyon seed, for what I’m calling “MoH”.  Halcyon is derived from Maris Otter, and it’s hard to tell the two apart–particularly when the dogs “helped” with the sowing, and thoroughly “tilled” the patches of sown seed, mixing the two.  No loss.  They’ll be spread across a 50’x50′ area this fall, assuming I can get the rototiller started in the next few days.

In the meantime, I’ve purchased a 25# bag of Conlon seed from the lovely folks at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and built an Arduino-controlled malt kiln and a decidedly low-tech couching bed, as well as a number of food-grade plastic buckets (can you ever have too many?) and an aquarium air pump.  With this, let the malting begin!

I’m doing this, at first, in six-pound batches.  Once I get things figured out, I might be able to go as high as fifteen; container size is a limiting factor.  The first step is to clean and steep the grains.  I put the grain into a bucket, covered them with a few inches of water, stirred, and poured off the chaff that floated to the top.  Repeat a few times, then just leave the water in, and let ’em go. The picture below is the grains beginning their journey…

Malting: Grains steeping
Grains cleaned and steeping.

After a couple of hours, pour off the water, and let the grains “air” for six to eight hours.  Then cover them again with water for six to eight (or ten or twelve, depending on your source), and repeat.  After about two days, they should have begun “chitting”–you’ll see little white tips on the grains.  At this point, they’re ready to begin germination.  Drain the water thoroughly, then let the grains sit, stirring them (gently) every so often–three or four times a day is supposedly good enough. They need oxygen at this point, and will be giving off CO2 and heat; the stirring keeps them oxygenated, and lets the heat dissipate somewhat.

Let them “rest” a day or two more, and they’ll have developed rootlets:

Malting: Chitting and roots
Grains “chitting,” and root development
You’ll want to start checking for acrospire growth at this point–every now and then, grab a grain, and rip it apart lengthwise.  Look for the shoot, connected to the rootlets, and see how long it is, relative to the grain.  At 2/3 to 100%, you need to start drying and kilning; less, and they need to sit a little longer. If too many of them go longer, you’ve got some lovely animal feed–the chickens love it.

 

If you’re drying them, there are multiple ways to go.  Easiest for most is probably the oven–but be careful; if you go over about 50 degrees C (about 120F), you’ll kill the enzymes you need for mashing. This is where my kiln comes into play:

Malting: Arduino-powered kiln
Arduino ‘kiln’, sitting atop the couching bed

I can’t take credit for it–that goes to Richard Oliver, whom I haven’t been able to contact, and his kiln design.  I believe mine works exactly the same, even though I’ve built it slightly differently (larger, and different temperature sensors).  Basically, there’s a low-wattage hot-air gun (the green thing, bottom center) blowing hot air below the grain (suspended on a stainless mesh).  There’s a temp sensor below the grain, and another one resting on top. The gaggle of wires is for an Arduino, which monitors the temperatures–if the bottom sensor gets to a set temperature, it starts cycling the heat gun, trying to maintain temp.  (The Arduino is programmed to function like a PID, “learning” to hold the set temp.) Once the top sensor reads the same as the bottom, that means the grain has dried.  In theory, I’ll be able to get most types of base malts with the kiln–crystal and roasted malts will take the oven.

So, the first attempt used the leftover Conlon I had for the planting–it was fairly old, and I’m not certain I got good germination from it. I’ve started batch #2, and will tweak the process, and report back.  Too much fun!

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Harvest time

Well, some of it, anyway. The winter barleys–Maris Otter and Halcyon–are completely harvested. I got most of it last weekend, but left a few stalks to finish “curing”/drying; they were retrieved yesterday. I’ll probably harvest the Bere barley this weekend, while the Hana probably needs another week or two. Overall, from sowing the first seed, it’s been about nine months; by the time it’s done, it’ll probably be ten months overall, for all the varieties. My yield looks pretty good: starting from 5 grams of seed per variety, I’ve got at least several ounces of each: Maris Otter (the only one I’ve done any real processing on) came to a little over 10 ounces, prior to threshing/winnowing (maybe 9 ounces, when all is said and done). With that sort of yield, assuming similar results the next few years, I could get about 28 pounds per variety next year–enough to “play” with malting some, and replanting for sustainability.

Actually, at a that rate of increase, only 8 pounds and a bit (total!) is probably enough to plant and be sustainable, figuring roughly 20 pounds needed per batch (10 gallons), and no more than 20 batches per year (legal limit), that’s 400 pounds; add back in the 8 pounds to re-seed, and it’s pretty close. If I just re-plant everything, then from the 9 ounces this year, I’ll get 28 pounds in 2014, then 1400 pounds in 2015… And that’s per variety; I don’t have enough field to pull that off.  Barley has an “optimal” seeding rate of about 85 pounds/acre; sticking to a manageable amount, about 1/4 acre, and planting ~5 pounds of each variety is much more reasonable…

The hops are, of course, another issue entirely. Their harvest season doesn’t usually start until August, as the days start getting a little shorter. My “retired” Cascades have a number of burrs and some early cones; their root system was significantly larger, of course, than the new rhizomes. So far, there’s not much to report with them–the bines were savaged by groundhogs a couple of weeks back, but are rebounding. I’ve set up cages to protect them; I wasn’t anticipating a harvest from them this year, anyway–they need to get established. Next year, however, I’m hoping will be productive. We’ll call it a few ounces this year, and (optimistically) about a pound next year; time will tell.

In other news, I’ve got about 1/3 of the decking on the deck of my future BierGarten (“Dante,” the deck on the Undisclosed Location).  I expect to have it done before the end of July; general clean-up and debris removal will probably be going on at the same time. I’m debating right now whether to get a separate power line/meter run, or just to extend the electrical service from the house (it has a 100A panel and a 200A panel-don’t ask why, because I don’t know). I’m planning (hopefully) on taking down the chimney in August/September, and making roof repairs around the same time. I’ve also got to patch the holes in the walls; once all that’s done, I can start storing some of my equipment out there. Still quite a bit to go before it’s even 50% usable, though.

In the meantime, the main house is getting a new outside over the next week–exciting, but also an unholy mess of preparations and the like. And we’re taking the next step in “dismantling” the utility room this evening, the better to re-build it (better and stronger) over the summer…  What fun!

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Who’s Got Herbs?

Teaching went well last weekend.  The class was smaller than I might have liked, but that was largely a factor of the size of the event.  I’ve submitted proposals to teach the classes at University in a month; we’ll see how that goes.

One of the topics of my classes is medicinal beer.  It would appear that at least the Germans were adding medicinal herbs to their beers, using them to transport whatever healing qualities the herbs were thought to carry.  I don’t recall ever having heard of this actively being done in period–although I may have seen a reference to it somewhere, probably about the Saxons.  Still, it stands to reason; they were using wine for the same purpose, and cordials (hard alcohol) were meant as medicine, not for their taste.

Some of the herbal additions seem reasonable and logical–they’re pretty standard herbal medicine, even today: Balm for stress reduction; Eyebright for eye ailments.  Fennel for coughs.  Ginger to settle the stomach.  Some others seemed odd, but I can go with it: oak leaves as a diuretic. Juniper against poison.  Still others were downright odd, if not dangerous: Salvia for the teeth (?); Pennyroyal as a decongestant (!).

Other “indirect” remedies include washing one’s face with wheat beer (good for the skin); beer warmed with oil and/or butter in the morning, as a laxative; table beer (very low alcohol) boiled with fresh hops to ease a toothache.

There were a couple of things I’d like to try, just to see–not for their medicinal purposes, but because the idea sounds tasty.  Rosemary beer.  Cumin.  Anise…

In other areas, while “making the rounds” of stuff growing around the farm, I found an interesting little gem:

Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, Alehoof

That would be a plant known as Ground Ivy, or Creeping Charlie.  Back in the Medieval period, however, it was commonly known as “Alehoof,” and was used by the Saxons as part of a typical gruit.  I’ve got piles of it; quite a bit is growing around the “retired” Cascades, appropriately enough…  Some experimentation will definitely be in order, just as soon as I can get brewing again!

And while I’m thinking about it, my barley:

Barley, Bere, Hana, Halcyon, Maris Otter

That’s the Maris Otter on the right, and the Halcyon on the left.  The Bere and Hana are hidden behind these…

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I’m Published!

Well, sort of.  At the least, two of my recipes are in a much more trafficked area than my website, and my name is attached to them. This turn of events is thanks to a friend of mine, known in the SCA as Sorcha Crowe, putting together an article on six-row barley for Zymurgy (the “official” magazine of the American Homebrewering Association–click the link in the sidebar and join up!).  She asked me if I had any recipes using six-row that she could use, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As luck would have it, my “historical” barley (the Bere) is a six-row.  Its progress in the field has been impressive–given another month, it may catch up to the winter barley in growth.  The Hana is still plugging along, but hasn’t really been as productive, which is somewhat disappointing.  (Overall, I’m not as impressed with the Hana as I would have liked–its germination rate seemed low, and now it’s not growing as well.  I may try selecting the better seeds, to try selecting for a better-adapted variety, but that’s a multi-year process…)

I have, at this point, most of the holes dug for the pier footings, to which I will attach a deck, and from there a pergola for my hops.  I hope to get the footings poured in the next couple of days; if I’m successful there, I should have hops in the ground after this weekend, and not a moment too soon.  The Sterling rhizomes have put up shoots, as have the Magnum and one of the Willamette.  The Cascades are lagging a bit, but if need be I can get a cutting from my “old” plants (which have reached their climbing strings, and are progressing as hops will do).

In the meantime, I think I have my class notes finalized for this weekend; I need to find a free minute or two to make copies of my handouts.  Atlantian University has found a site for a Summer Session in June, and my Lady Wife and I are combing our schedules to see if we can attend and present our classes (she teaches classes on Russian clothing).  Right now, things are looking positive.

On another positive note, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to actually brew something by late summer.  Probably not “inside” in the Brewhouse, nor on a nice, shiny electric brew-rig, but brewing nonetheless.  There have been a number of people ask when I was going to start back up; for now, that’s the best I can offer–“soonish.”

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Some observations on barley

The biggest problem with growing barley, I’m finding, is observing the progress. On the one hand, brewing is a hobby for the patient–it’s all “hurry up and wait,” after all. On the other hand, watching barley grow is rather like–well, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s like watching grass grow.  (Makes sense, really, since that’s exactly what it is…) At least with the hops you can see progress on a daily basis.

So, everything has germinated. The Maris Otter and Halcyon are nearing the tops of their “cages”. The Hana and Bere are a ways behind that. I’m disappointed with the germination rate I got from the Hana in the field–of the 30-40 seeds, I’ve got maybe ten sprouts. (All of the Hana in the planter came up–it’s likely a soil issue, rather than a seed issue.)  The Bere is happy both in the field and the planter, with its second set of leaves up and the third set looking not far behind.

In the meantime, with less than two weeks to go before their introduction, I’m feverishly going over, revising, and correcting my class notes for the Medieval German Beer classes.  There are three, tentatively titled: “Period German Brewing Practices,” “Medicinal German Beers,” and “A Period German Pub Crawl.”  Thus far, the corrections are primarily fixing typos, and making sure my facts line up.  Of the three, I’m happiest with the Pub Crawl; it’s entirely possible that in the future I’ll fold the Period Practices bit into that one for a “mega-class”.  I’m hoping to have some medicinal herb people in the Medicinal Beers class, and to make it more of a discussion group.

Part of the fun for the Pub Crawl was looking at the various local beer names–“brands,” if you will.  A friend of mine was commenting on the wide variety of beer names available at the local liquor superstore, and the humor value in many of them… Well, our ancestors were no different in that regard: Butterfly, Toad, Choir Finch, Mosquito Mustard, and Raving Man are among the less vulgar names.  Some of them describe the feeling, or aftereffect, of the beer: Body-blow, Rip-Head, Blow-the-Man-Down.  The Lubeck offering of “Israel” was so named because of its strength: “People strive with it as Jacob wrestled with the Angel.”  (“Israel” is from the Hebrew for “wrestles with God”.)

Surprisingly, only a few of the beers were familiar to me, in terms of historical offerings: Gose, Israel, Broihane, Alt Klaus, Joben, and Mumme. Of those, I have only ever tasted commercial Gose.  (Mumme has become non-alcoholic, while Broihane morphed into a Pilsner, apparently.  I have practically no information whatsoever on Alt Klaus or Joben.)  Bock was not mentioned as such, although it was present if you know where to look–it derived from the name of its town of origin, Einbeck.  Indeed, it was searching for information on period “Einbeckisch Bier” that led me to the sources for my classes.

I’ll try to update again, either as “teaching-day” approaches, or soon after… And, I promise, pictures of barley (and hops!) will be forthcoming before long.