Wild Yeast

So after being forced to work a double shift, I came home to a starter wort that was actively fermenting without me having added any yeast.  For all of you who don't know what that means, we brewers make a very small "starter" which is just a small amount of wort, a.k.a beer after it's been boiled but before the yeast is added.  This starter helps the yeast get ready for the big time.  Think of it like a professional sports team playing a college team.  Anyways, yeast is what makes beer....well beer.  Yeast eat sugar and turn it into alcohol; awesome isn't it.  But yeast sometimes need a little warm up hence the starter.  Well normally I add the yeast I want to add, but because I was stuck working much longer than anticipated, and the jar sat open longer than expected, some wild yeast found their way in and started eating up those sugars and voila! wild yeast!  They have a nice sour flavor which is typical for wild yeast and so I'm thinking of making a farmhouse ale.  Farmhouse ales are what most people drank back in the 1700's before we knew what yeast was.  Back then they just called it God is Good, a very appropriate name if you ask me! 

Hops Picking

 

So it took a while to put up them up but these are the pictures of our harvesting day.  We got over 4 ounces of hops once they were dried.  It was a good thing we picked them when we did because about 4 days later Hurricane Irene came and tore down the tree branch you see in the video holding up the hops.  She also slightly broke one of the trellis's.  Over all though we had a successful harvest and look forward to getting much more next year.  

Putting him to work early!!

Success!!!

The wedding beers were a huge success everybody seemed to really like them.  It was a great time had by all and our labels held up better than expected.  We've recently done another collaborative brew with George and this time we did a Pumpkin ale.  We gutted an 11 lb pumpkin and roasted it for about an hour then added it to the mash.  We also added some spices too, the end result smells delicious so we'll be looking for to trying it after it's done fermenting.