I haven’t Blogged here in awhile cause it turns out the life of a Farmer is pretty freakin’ busy!
I’m happy to announce that phase 1 of the Hopyard is complete! All of the Hickory and Ash postes were cut down, drawn and set entirely from our land! I’m posting a few pictures of our progress from this past weekend which would not have been possible without help from our friends and family… for which Caroline and I are eternally grateful!
We will post more pictures and or video of our future progress…
It doesn’t feature all the beautiful Mike Shane pictures, for that you have to buy the magazine but it is brilliantly written and I have to one again Thank Glenn BurnSilver for the article!
As I mentioned in the last post, Brewing As Art is featured in the December issue of Brew Your Own Magazine! It is a fairly in depth article concentrating on the art/construction side of the project. Glenn BurnSilver did a wonderful job of outlining our vision for the Sculpture and was beautifully framed with images taken by Mike Shane during the construction process in Scott’s metal shop; NY Custom Fabricators. I believe it is the best piece written to date on our “Franken-Brewery”
As many of you know, BAA was sitting under 3 feet of water in Scott’s Shop due to Hurricane Sandy. Over the last few weeks Scott has been busy trying to get his life back in order so we have not at this point addressed the damage to the Sculpture.That said, Scott tells me he is confident it will brew again so stay tuned for updates…
BAA will be making a special appearance at this years Maker Faire on Saturday, September 29th from 10am to 7pm & Sunday, September 30th from 10am to 6pm at the New York Hall of Science 47-01 111th Street, Queens, NY 11368-2950. Located in Flushing Meadows Park.
For those not in the know, the Maker Faire is a yearly celebration of Invention, Art and Creativity. It is a kid friendly and fun filled day featuring unique items and how to work shops. There is a little something for everyone and well worth the trip to Queens!
Scott and I will be at the opening party on Friday the 28th and will be pouring “Gingerfoot Quadruple” (A Belgian Style Quadruple brewed with Candied Ginger, 9.3% ABV) to kick off the festival in style!
Tickets can be purchased here or at the park the day of.
So here I sit at a gas station/market/laundromat(yea,there’s not much here!) sipping a mediocre coffee and a sub par donut and totally happy to have it! I have to be honest in saying that I didn’t think I would like Alaska too much. It seemed that the sacrifice to be in such a remote location was hardly worth it. I guess it’s the New Yorker in me to think in such a way and old habits die hard but man, was I wrong!
The first 24 to 48 hours was a kinda haze. I guess it was a combination jet lag, the anxiety of traveling and the fact the all of Alaska was overcast and rainy. I dove right into my duties as Jay’s brewing assistant and had no idea what to expect. Then something wonderfull
happened…the clouds parted, the skies cleared and there it was… The mountains! Snow covered, tecnocolored and stunning. You have no choice but to be in awe of the scenery,but the thing that got me most was the air! A big draw of it was like smelling an interesting and complex beer… it was like a mixture of pine/spruce and smoke. I was hooked and I got it. I always said that New Englanders have such beautiful summers because they suffer such exteme winter and I believe that to be the case here ten fold.
Everyone I have met here have been gracious and wonderful. Even the most hardened Alaskans,(which you can tell by them being a touch more disheveled and sun beaten than others)after a few cold stares all of a sudden lighten up, smile and ask how you are doing. But because of Denali State Park, most people here are working the tourism trade, or are tourist themselves so it makes for a unique mixture of people from all over the world.
I know you must be saying,what does all this have to do with beer?
I thought when I got here without any distractions, that I would be able to catch up on my reading, blog and relax a bit but that has not been the case! My first hard lesson about brewing on a 5 barrel system in a very busy brew pub is that you spend 10,12 or even 15 hours in the brew house. You have about enough time at the end of the day to eat dinner, drink a few beers and go to bed because you have to wake up and do it all over again in the morning. Am I complaining? Absolutely not! To brew beer every day for a living I would gladly work more!
That said, all I have been able to do is Tweet about a beer i’m drinking or post a few pictures on Facebook of the scenery in between all my duties as assistant brewer. So I will continue to blog when I can get a few minutes to write in the form of the header; “Drinking Beer at the End of the World” and fill you in further on all the details of this wonderful place I am quickly falling in love with…
Ok, so its not really the end of the world but being in Alaska sure feels like it!
I had the great pleasure of having a beer brunch at Silver Gultch Brewery, which is actually the Northern most brewery in America. The beers did not disappoint and the brewers were gracious and pulled out the good stuff upon our arrival. Here are a few photos of the brew house. Some of their tanks were actually repurposed jelly boilers!
I’m hoping that my schedule here will allow to come back to their beer festival next weekend and drink some more of their brews!
Cheers for now…
I’m sitting here at Logan airport patiently awaiting my boarding call, I say patiently now because after a 17 plus hour trip and 3 planes I won’t be so patient!
I am about to start a 10 day beer adventure in a wonderfully beautiful part of the world; Denali, Alaska with my buddy Jay Bullen, the head brewer for 49 State Brewery. I will be blogging, drinking, brewing and raising hell! So check back to themaltshed.com often for my beer adventure updates…
I hope you all can join me in my last official night out as a NYer! This is a totally INFORMAL event, just a bunch of friends wishing me good luck in the form of beers. (Just the way I like it!). Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy’s No. 43 in the East Village has been kind enough to to put together a send off for me Craft Beer Style!
This Saturday, June 23rd from 7 to 9 pm (Or as long as I’m standing!)
There will be a special keg tapped for the event, Avery Brewing’s Samael’s Ale, a 15% English Strong Ale! Now that’s going out in style! Plus a few surprises from the cellar…
Jimmy’s also has great food and a SERIOUS beer selection. Hope you can make it!
It is with heavy heart that I leave this city that I called home all my life.There was a time when NYC coursed thru my vains. I couldn’t even ever go on vacation for fear of missing out on something in this city that I loved so much. I was in awe of it’s energy, the fact that its was always open and most of all, the immense diversity of it’s people.
I once met a homeless concert pianist on the street with his own piano! Not some keyboard, a full on Steinway piano! He didn’t have anything in the world and clearly had some issues, but he was good at one thing and even homelessness couldn’t stop him from what he loved. He pushed that Steinway all over Midtown Manhattan playing for drinking money…Only in NYC.
I mention this because of his passion, the passion that people have in this place. I’m still not sure if the passionate people are drawn to NY or if being here does something to a person, but I will say that it is that passion, that drive and that hustle that drew me in and became a part of who I am..
My wife Caroline and I have had the pleasure of calling New Brighton, Staten Island our home for 4 years and we will NEVER forget what this place has given us.We will never forget the people we have met here and the opportunity to own our lovely home on Hendricks Avenue in such a tight knit community. It is you people that made our decision to leave NY the hardest…
It is my belief that NYC is a living, breathing ever changing place that needs youth to fuel it’s growth. I have reached that point now where it is time for me to move on but I will ALWAYS be a New Yorker no matter where I am…
Enough Waxing Poetic!
We are moving to Merrimac, Massachusetts to take over a 42 acre farm and do some small scale hop farming, and eventually pursue my major passion; Brewing Beer. Our plan is to make a small farm brewery that distributes locally, has a tap room on the grounds, and eventually a bed and breakfast and beer destination. We have many other components to our plans and are anxious to get there, put our hands in the earth and get started.
I haven’t had a chance to update this blog lately for obvious reasons but I plan to hit the ground running once I become a New Englander. I will post the final installment of “Springtime in the Hopyard” and dig right in to doing what I love…Brewing Beer!
In this 3rd installment of “Springtime in the Hopyard,” I will be explaining how to set-up a simple and easy “Pole Trellis” for your homegrown hops. This is by no means a permanent structure, so it can easily be taken down at the end of the season. I built this on the cheap: each post made up of 2 untreated, full dimension 2×4′s that are sistered together, instead of using the pricer 4×4 posts. The posts, 16 foot tall, are buried 3 feet deep leaving 13 feet of height for growth. Hops can easily grow up to 20 feet, if you were growing on a commercial scale you would want to use 22 ft posts at the very least, allowing 18 feet above the ground with at least 4 foot below ground. Good luck finding 22ft posts at Home Depot or your local lumber yard! For the purposes of a test/or home yard 13 feet is sufficient.
Next you want to measure out your plot and determine how many hop hills will fit in the space. You ‘ll want at least 3 feet of separation between hop hills so as to not have any issues with the hops intermingling (especially if you are planting more than one variety). Trust me, once your hops are at the height of growing season it is impossible to separate them! My plot is approx.10×20 ft so I figured 8 hops hills would do nicely. I used stakes to mark where I planned to build the hop hills…
Next I dug two holes 3 feet deep for each of the posts. Then I drilled holes at the top of each post for the eyelets which must be strung BEFORE putting the posts in the ground–it is much easier to work from the ground than on a ladder. I like to use Coir (Coconut Fiber) to string up hops, it is strong, organic and compost-able, but if you cannot find Coir, you can easily use bailing twine or even fine wire. Whatever you decide to use just make sure you tie a good knot, our secret family knot is aka “The Sheep-shank!”
Once the Coir is threaded through the top eyelets, and tied off, the post are ready to be raised and holes backfilled. The next step will be to build the hop mounds and then to secure the twine or Coir to stakes around the perimeter of the hop hills. I use 1 1/2 to 2 foot stakes banged into the ground, leaving only about 2 inches are showing. I then drill and screw more eyelets for the string to be strung.
The next installment will be on dividing up your rhizomes, planting your hop hills, and finally stringing up your new Pole Trellis…
…But first, no hard work on the farm goes unrewarded. We finished off the day with a bottle of Strong Belgian Ale that had been aging in the cellar for 2 years! A perfect end to the first official day of the new hop season.
