BIG weekend coming up...

We have a big party weekend coming up at Yazoo!  We first started brewing in October of 2003, ten years ago this month.  We're going to celebrate the only way we know how - new beers, great music, great food, and hopefully with all our friends!  Details about the party are here - http://www.yazoobrew.com/10years.html.  Details about the new beers are below:

We have two new beers coming out.  The first, as you know if you've been reading our blog, is the Bells Bend Preservation Ale.  I am calling it a new beer, even though we released one the past two years, because this is the first year we've actually had enough hops to BREW with them.  The last two years, we simply steeped the wet fresh hops in a batch of our Pale Ale.  While those beers turned out great, I didn't feel like we would capture the true essence of the Bells Bend hops until we were able to use them as part of a full batch of beer.

But this year, we got three times what we picked last year, and were able to use the hops in the final hop addition.  We steeped the fresh hops in the hot wort at the end of the boil, before cooling the wort and adding the yeast in the fermenter.

The result?  A great, well balanced American Pale Ale, with a nice blend of biscuity malts and pleasant bitterness, and a great hop aroma.  Will it blow away the hopheads in the crowd?  No, but that was not the intent.  We wanted to make a well-balanced beer that showcased a locally-grown hop, and that's what I think we did!  (Hopheads - and I include myself in that group - we didn't forget you - see the next post!)

As last year, a portion of the sales of this beer will go back to the Sulphur Creek Farm, so that they can continue their mission.  We hope to expand the hop field even more next year with these proceeds.

The bottle release party will be this weekend, Saturday Oct 5th, starting at noon at the brewery.  After the release, we will continue selling the beer at the brewery, and we will also be sending cases of the beer out to our distributors as well.  The 750 ml bottles of Bells Bend Preservation Ale will be selling for $4 each or six for $20.

Bells Bend Preservation Ale bottled today!

This year's Bells Bend Preservation Ale was bottled today!  Check it out:

Bottles will be released on Saturday, Oct 5th at the brewery as part of our 10 year Anniversary party.  Come on down and get you some!  And if you helped pick the hops with us this year, we've got your share stashed away, so don't worry.

Pictures from the Big Hop Pickin' 2013 at Bells Bend Farms

Hops ready to be picked!

The hop poles looking a little barren now, with the hop vines gone...

Now for the hard part!  Hand picking cones off 150 vines!

The hops safely in cold storage overnight...

Pouring the hops into our lauter tun, used as a hop back for this special batch!

Hops in the lauter, about to be steeped in the hot wort for an hour...

Hot work, getting the spent hops out of the lauter...

The spent hops, with all their flavor and aroma now in the beer!

Big Hop Picking Party this Thursday, August 22

Our Mystery hops are ready to be picked out at Bell Bend!  I love this time of year!  We'll be picking them out at Sulphur Creek Farm, just north of the intersection of Ashland City Hwy and Old Hickory Blvd.  We have about 150 vines to cut down and pick this year, about three times as many last year.  So we are looking for volunteers who want to come out, drink some fresh hop beer (from the Cascade variety we picked three weeks ago), and get your hands sticky and green from all the hops.  It's a fun time, and it's a great way to get back to nature and see what actually goes into making a good beer.  If you would like to volunteer to help, please email Linus at linus@yazoobrew.com and he'll get you hooked up.

Hop Project #74, first batch out 08/19/13

We bottled our next batch of Hop Project, #74, yesterday on 8/19/13.  Ivan took a turn with this one, and here is his description of the beer:

"I brewed batch 74 to honor my dear ole’ Grandad’s birthday. He grew up in Surrey county, England, right next to Kent. So in this batch we used mostly East Kent Goldings and Progress hops, both from the UK. To give it an American twist (Grandad now lives in the States), I used some Cascade for flavor and a touch of Chinook for a stronger bitterness. For his birthday I sent him a case. Cheers, Grandad!

-Ivan" 

I like it.  The English hops give it a nice lemony, green tea aroma, and the bitterness is more restrained than with American hops.  Look for this one in all of our distribution areas, including most of Tennessee, Mississippi, and northern Alabama.

Getting ready to pick some hops next Tuesday, July 30th - want to volunteer?

Well, the mixture of the rain and hot weather has the Cascades ahead of schedule this year.  We are planning on picking the 30 or so Cascade plants we have out at Sulphur Creek Farms in Bells Bend this coming Tuesday, July 30th, during their weekly potluck night.  It's a fun time, and if you would like to volunteer to help, let us know at info@yazoobrew.com.  It's a great time, with plenty of cold beers to help with the picking.  We normally chop down the vines, spread them out on a big table, and hand-pick the hop cones during plenty of conversation and cold brews.

The big field of about 150 vines of the mystery Bells Bend Preservation hop is coming along great too, but they aren't ready to pick yet.  We are going to shoot for sometime around the third week of August to pick them.  In the meantime, we will be using the first-picked Cascade hops in a special small batch that should be ready in time to drink while we are picking the Bells Bend hop - turning the main hop picking afternoon into a real "pickin party"!

Once we have the mystery hops picked, we should have enough to brew a full big 40 bbl batch this year, and to get bombers of the beer out in stores this year!

Hop progress out at Sulphur Creek Farm in Bells Bend

I checked in with Eric and Loran out at Sulphur Creek Farm today.  The hops are really thriving this year!  With all the rain mixed with plenty of sunshine, they are way ahead of last year.  The row of about 25 Cascade-variety plants are already budded-out with huge cones, and smell great already.  They may be ready for harvest in about a month, amazingly.

The bigger field of our "mystery hop" is doing great too, with almost all of the 150 or so plants coming up.  The rhizomes that bore cones last year were divided up and the new plantings are doing well.  The two-year old rhizomes already have vines that have reached 17' or so and have good buds coming out.  This variety snoozed last year until late August, when the cones popped out in what seemed like two weeks!  That's probably the time frame for this year too.

We are so lucky to have our partnership with Sulphur Creek Farm on growing these beautiful hops.  I can't describe how rejuvenating it is to be able to walk a field filled with the very herb that we love in our Pale Ale and Hop Projects.  It really brings home the fact that as brewers, we and our beers are only as good as the ingredients that go into what we create.  Here lately my life has been all about long days filled with finicky bottling lines, undersized air compressors, balky CO2 refrigeration systems, and other mechanical problems, but walking up and down rows of beautiful hops and crushing a few ripe cones between my fingers, and smelling the fragrant lupulin, really brings me back to Earth.  Cheers!