Next year? There will be hops.

Hops are pretty vigorous growers and not particularly picky. Today, on twitter, the enjoyable Jeff Louella posted that he had photos of his hops garden on his blog. I thought the photos were great and Jeff graciously agreed to let me link to him from the site. So wander over and take a peek.

While I was planning on planting hops for purely aesthetic reasons, Jeff’s vines are for use in homebrewing. Be sure and stop by his blog from time to time to see how it’s going.

Post from: EveryJoe

Hops Vines On the Run

As a beer lover, I’ve often considered brewing my own beer. The possibilities seem endless – brown ales, pale ales, stouts, fancy Belgian-style beers – all for a little effort and at a significantly lower cost than the same number of cases of beer. That, and I’d truly understand and know my beers.

Then I looked a little closer, at a whole lot of cleaning, lugging pots and bottles around, more cleaning, stirring and mixing, more cleaning, some sterilizing for good measure. You get the idea. It was the thought of sterilizing a whole bunch of bottles that finally persuaded me not to try brewing, but I still feel as though my beer education is lacking something as a result.

If, after reading that, you’re still interested in brewing, the good news is that there’s a very comprehensive looking (and FREE) guide to brewing available on the internet. Even better, if you decide you like it and get sick of waiting for your inkjet to laboriously print that puppy out, you can buy a copy of the entire book as well.

If you’ve brewed using this guide, let me know, or if you can recommend other online brewing sources throw it in a comment for the rest of us.

Post from: EveryJoe

Learning to brew for free