The hops keep on growing. These are my two Centenntial plants in the foreground with two Newports behind them; behind the picture are two Willamette and two Cascade plants also in pots. The Centennials are out-pacing the other plants so far. They were the first to sprout and have been the fastest growers after sprouting. I also have a larger number of bines on the Centennials plants than I do on the others. I’m not sure why that is the case, but I assume it has something to do with the variety as I am basically treating all the plants the same.
One of the most common searches people use to find my blog is ‘growing hops in pots’, with people often trying to find the correct size of pot to use. I’ve got eight plants in two different size pots. The Centennial and Newport plants shown here are potted in 12″ plastic pots from the hardware store. The Willamettes and Cascades are planted in 16″ pots. I was originally only going to have the four 12″ pots, but ended up getting four more rhizomes to plant. I decided that bigger was better, and the 12″ pots were looking pretty small to me once I the rhizomes had started to sprout. From general reading about hop online, I suspect that even the 16″ pots are too small for the hops to grow to their full potential. I can only wait and see. This is my first year growing hops, so I certainly have things to learn.
I am using pots because I don’t have a place to grow the hops at home at the moment. My backyard is both too small and is sort of under construction at the moment. Once it’s all sorted out, I might be able to have a few plants there. So I have the hops growing at the office up the side of an old silo. They get lots of sun and have plenty of room above them to grow. Part of the deal is that I have to keep them in pots so that they are relatively contained and can be removed at the end of the season. This is fine with me as I’d like to take them home someday as well.
Since they are growing in pots and have relatively little soil for nutrients, I have been watering them daily with Miracle Grow solution. I use a 1 gallon water jug to water the 8 plants once a day, so each plant is getting about 1/8 of a gallon of Miracle Grow water per weekday plus whatever rain they get naturally. I’m not in the office on weekends, so they have to fend for themselves. I try to give them 2 waterings on Friday, but I generally forget in the rush to get home for the weekend. I might have to start watering them twice a day when they get bigger. I’ll be checking for any leaf damage or stunted growth to determine if they are lacking nutrients. I’m also considering switching to a bloom fertilizer once they plants stop growing foliage and start growing hop cones so that I can maximize production.
Again this is my first year growing hops, so take my processes with a grain of salt. So far, they seem to be working just fine, but I’ll not really know how successful I have been until the fall.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercial, ipa, o'fallon, o'fallon 5-day ipa, tasting
Last time I reviewed an O’Fallon beer I got busted by someone from the brewery for not really liking the smoky flavor of their smoked porter. Smoke just isn’t really my thing; no offense to O’Fallon, smoked malt makers, or even smoked malt itself. I think my description of the beer was accurate, so if you are interested in the beer or it sounds like something you might enjoy, please go have an O’Fallon Smoke. I have it on good authority that it’s one of the best smoked beers out there and it’s well loved by Colin who seems to know his beer. I felt bad for a few days for posting that I didn’t really like the smoked malt flavor, so I thought I had better try another O’Fallon beer and try to salvage my reputation with the brewery. Luckily Stephanie had brought me some O’Fallon 5-Day IPA from a trip to Illinois to try.
5-Day IPA poured a hazy orange-tan color tinged with lime green at the edges and a substantial off-white, persistent head. The aroma is of strong grapefruit with a light touch of floral character; citrus dominates. The hop aroma is exceptionally strong even for an IPA and very fresh/clean. I could very well be smelling a newly opened bag of hops for my brewing; there is no muddying of the aroma. The head is creamy with a strong hop smell. The drink begins with bitterness that tastes mostly floral despite the strong citrus aroma. Bitterness coats the mouth and is well balanced with the creamy body. I detect floral hops obviously, citrus, some pine and a leafy vegetal quality I associate with dry-hopping. The aftertaste is of bitterness throughout the mouth.
The hop aroma of 5-Day IPA is extreme and crisp, definitely the hoppiest citrus hop smelling beer I have had. I’d say the beer is made by an ingredient lover as it highlights the freshness of hops, which as a home brewer I can appreciate. The bitterness seems more in the middle of the range for the style. This might be an illusion though because of the seriously strong aroma. I normally stop after a pint of IPA, especially ones that are citrusy. I like hops and bitter beer, but I often have trouble appreciating the hop flavor and aroma of an IPA after the first pint due to the persistent bitterness that spoils the palate. With the 5-Day IPA though, I was going back for a couple more pints and I was able to continue to appreciate the strong hop aroma with each glass. I drank it more like I drink a pale ale. Overall, it’s a very drinkable beer in a style know for nearly undrinkable monsters.
People are always talking about a balance between the malt and hop character of a beer, but I think there needs to be more discussion about the balance between the bitterness of the beer and its hop flavor and aroma. For my tastes, most American IPAs go overboard on the bitterness in comparison to the aroma end of the spectrum. I think part of this has to do with the citrus character of American hops like Cascade that are normally used in these beers. I find the citrus aroma to be fairly light compared to the piney aroma of a hop like Simcoe for example. Maybe citrus is just a lighter smell (I think it’s a lighter aroma in colognes as well for example) than piney or earthy aromas. I think the only way to get what I would find to be a balanced aroma from a citrus hop based IPA would be dry-hopping like O’Fallon has done with the 5-Day IPA. So nice work O’Fallon.
If an IPA is going to be extremely bitter, it needs to have some extreme hop flavor and aroma. I think this is possible, for example the recent Hop Project 6 IPA from Yazoo I found to strike a good balance between being more bitter and having the matching hop flavor and aroma. English IPAs also seem to avoid this problem by being less bitter – obviously not the American, hop-loaded way. Anyway, I like a drinkable IPA and I like to see an IPA that isn’t the standard version but still uses the same ingredients. I would have been off using different hops when there is still much to see with what we already have.
