Hops Update

After dropping the twine on my Nugget bines a third time, one of the the bines has again reached the top of the twine.  I think at this point I'm going to let the top of the bine start slumping over.  I read that would encourage the growth of laterals.  I think that the length on that Nugget bine is at approximately 15 feet now.  I think that's pretty good for a bine growing on a condo balcony.

The stumpy Cascade seems to have given up and shriveled to death.  That sucks, but that's the reason I bought two  rhizomes of each variety.

The surviving Cascade is still shorter than the two Nugget bines, but it's started shooting out new horizontal growth.  I hope those are the laterals I've been reading about.

Cheap Fermentation Temperature Control Update

The modifications I've made to my temperature control (putting my cold water reservoir in my mini refrigerator) are not working out well.  So far, the control seems to have trouble keeping the beer below 68 during fermentation.  That isn't so bad for the Belgian blonde I'm doing right now, but I like some of my other beers to ferment cooler.  I may consider looking for a larger reservoir.

I'm also considering changing the placement of my temperature probe.  Right now I have it attached to the carboy below the first couple inches of beer.  But I've notice my temperature readings near the bottom of my carboy are about 8 degrees cooler than near the bottom couple of inches.  Something to look into later.

Hop Update

A couple of days ago I had to add about five extra feet to the twine on my Nugget hops.  The Nuggets are continuing to grow vigorously.  The healthy cascade is still growing rapidly, though not as impressively as the Nuggets.

Unfortunately, the sickly Cascade is looking like a goner.

As for the fungus gnats, I've been letting my soil dry until I see the leaves at the top getting a little crispy before I water.  I've also been watering with the garlic solution.  The gnats aren't as plentiful as they were, but there's still a lot of them buzzing around my pots.  I've also started putting out little dishes of vinegar mixed with a few drops of dish soap around the plants.  The vinegar traps look like they're catching hundreds of gnats, but they don't stop coming.  I didn't want to use poison on my plants, but I'm starting to reconsider now that I'm seeing gnats buzzing around my house (where they might land in my beer).

Hop Update

I've recently noticed a bunch of fungus gnats (identified from a google image search) coming out of my hop containers.  I've decided to wait longer between waterings and apply a garlic water recipe I found on the internet (head of garlic soaked in water for 2 days, then strained and diluted to 1 gallon).  I also added chilis to the water because I read that was supposed to repel other pests.  I'll see how it works in a few days.  The plants seem to be doing fine despite the bugs, with the exception of my sickly Cascade.

Full Wort Boil on a Glasstop Electric Range

This is 5.5 gallons of wort that I got to a boil on my glasstop electric range.  After I got the first and second runnings into the kettle I believe my wort was at around 155 degrees F.  With this towel secured around the pot, I got to a boil in approximately 22 minutes.  

When I first started trying to do all grain I had stuck to 4 gallon batches that barely fit in my 5 gallon pot.  I wanted to be able to do 5 gallon batches, but I wasn't sure my stove could get all that wort to a boil.  I ended up buying this 7.5 gallon pot with the self-justification that if I couldn't get the full 5 gallon batch to boil, I could at least do my 4 gallon batches without having so much wort splashing out during the boil.

I was surprised at how well this towel wrap improved the efficiency of my boil.  When I did my first batch of extract, it took me 40 minutes to get a mere 3.5 gallons of wort to a boil from 155 degrees F.  It seems like the towel made a huge difference.  I left a couple of inches between the towel and the bottom of the pot to avoid having the towel burn.  I also watched the pot in case the towel slipped (which it didn't).

I should note that I brought this to a boil with a lid on, which I removed when the wort got up to around 208 degrees F.  I gotten my last two 4 gallon batches up to a boil with the lid on and not noticed any DMS character, so I went ahead and did it on this beer.  This one's still in the fermenter, so I can't be sure there weren't any problems caused by the lid.   

Hops Growing Update

There hasn't been much going on in the hopyard so there hasn't been much to post about.  Everything is still growing bigger, except for that stumpy Cascade (which still looks small and sickly).  You can see the stumpy Cascade on the right side of the photo.  

As mentioned before, I was using the ajustable trellis system described in a BYO article (http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/1926-growing-hops-in-containers).  Today, I saw that the Nugget plants were reaching the top of my trellis, so I decided to drop them.  I didn't want the bines flopping in the wind because it's been uncharacteristically windy for me this year.  To avoid having lots of slack bines flopping around in the wind, I let the lower part of the bines flop over the edges of my growing containers.  Then, I attached the top of the twine hanging over the bucket to the twine at the point where I had attached to base of the twine to the container.  This allowed me to leave the lower part of the twine hanging loose, while pulling the upper part of the twine snug.  I tried to get a picture of what I did below.

Cheap Fermentation Control Update

These are the pictures of my new modifications to my cheap fermentation temperature control system.  This post will probably not make a lot of sense if you haven't read my original post about this temperature control system (http://greatermonkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-cheap-fermentation-temperature.html)  As I mentioned in my last update about the system (http://greatermonkey.blogspot.com/2012/04/temperature-control-upgrade.html), I replaced my cooler of ice and water with a jug in a small refrigerator.  This is the end of the first full day it's been in use.  It's keeping a Belgian blonde at 70 degrees F (didn't want to push it too hard on its first try). 

Here's the fermentation held at a steady 70 degrees.

Here's the fermentation held at a steady 70 degrees

I saw some rope on sale at the hardware store and decided to use it to hold the sleeping bag to the carboy.  This was much easier than cramming the sleeping bag into the tub around the carboy.

This is the milk jug in my refrigerator.  You can see that I've sliced the top open to allow the pump to fit.

This blurry shot shows my hoses and the power cord for the pump going into the refrigerator.  I simply put a slit behind the magnetic strip so that I could lift away a portion of the vinyl between the door and the magnet strip.  You can see the flap of vinyl folded behind the black power cord from the pump.  You can't see it in the picture, but the slit goes around the corner a few inches.  I needed to go around the corner to make a big enough hold for the plug on the end of the pump power cord.  I made the slices a few weeks ago and have found that a little blue masking tape along the slit keeps the refrigerator operating normally when the not being used to chill my fermenter.

I'll try fermenting something a few degrees colder the next time around.