Hop Shortage? GROW YER OWN!

Howdy once more, dear readers.
I had a very rare opportunity this last week. As many of you know, hops are vital to brewing and said hops have become somewhat scare and very expensive. Well, a few years ago, I planted some hop vines around our brewery in Polson. I wanted them more for the visual impact than the actual hop cones. These vines have been, well, growing like a weed every summer. The oldest one achieving over a foot of growth per day at peak growing time! Well, these vines have also beer producing a respectable crop of hop cones every year so, of course, I thought "Why don't I harvest these and use them in a specialty beer?"
That's just what I'm doing. Before I use them in the brewkettle, however. I wanted to get them into a form that would allow me maximum utilization. Normally I use hops in a pelletized form. But I lack the equipment to force the whole hops into tight little pellets. I do have the ability to make the next best thing; hop plugs!
So, after I spent a couple of beautiful, Montana afternoons harvesting the hop cones, I began the process of converting them into plugs:
First. I dried the hop cones in my food dehyrators for about five hours.
Second, the dried hops needed to be pulverized into a powderized form for better access to the ever-elusive hop oils.
Third, the pulverized hops were loaded into the plug form (aka piece of PVC pipe!).
Fourth, I compressed the pulverized hops in the plug form using a custom-made hop plunger (I love my wood lathe!).
Fifth, a 12-pound sledge hammer gently compresses the hops in the form tighter and tighter.
Sixth, I left the plug form full overnight to ensure the hops would keep the shape.
Finally, the new hop plug is extracted from the form and vacuum sealed for future brews!








So far, this process, while being very labor-intensive, has yielded some surprisingly good plugs! I'm pretty anxious to get these guys into a brew sometime this fall or winter. It'll be like a pint of Montana summer in the winter duldrums! We're also planning on erecting some hop poles in our beer garden and utilize that space as a "hop garden". It's gonna be a lot of work but it'll pay off visually and hop-wize!
Until next time,
Your Humble Brewer!

State of our State

Photo: Your humble brewer in front of the first brewery in the Montana Territory, the Gilbert Brewery, Virgina City, Mont.

Quite a last few weeks in the Montana brewery culture. We saw a staggeringly-proposed rule change put forth from the Montana Department of Revenue (affecting Montana's tasting rooms) rescinded at almost the last moment. For those of you unfamiliar with this chain of events, allow me to present my perspective:
The rule change was posted on the Department of Revenue's (DOR) website a little over a week before the hearing. Luckily, one of our state's brewers noticed this and rang the warning bell. The Montana State Brewer's Association (MSBA) began a very concentrated effort to inform the public, elected officials, and themselves about this rule change. Letters were written to the Governor, State Senators, State Congressman, State Representatives, reporters, editors, and any else that would listen. Petitions were started and filled with passionate comments at a record pace. Enough public interest was whipped up that Governor Schweitzer ordered a meeting between the DOR and MSBA. At this meeting, the brewers were told by DOR Director Dan Bucks, that the rule would be rescinded from the hearing and the director apologized for his staff not communicating with the brewers about this rule prior to the posting. Huge thanks to Director Bucks for having the strength to do the right thing regarding this issue. It was further stated that the Montana Tavern Association (MTA) had nothing to do with this. It is interesting to note that in newspaper articles when this issue first breached quoting DOR employees that they had "received numerous complaints from all-beverage licensee holders" (read: tavern owners). When these DOR employees were pressed to present these complaints, they stated that these types of records are not kept by the DOR. Whether the MTA was behind this proposed tasting room restriction or not is somewhat unclear. Bill Schneider of the New West online magazine gives a real nice synopsis of the whole "brew-ha-ha" (I hate that term!) at http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/score_one_for_the_brewmasters/C41/L41/.

Once the dust settled, I found out (from the DOR) that tasting rooms in Montana are legally allowed to remain open past 8:00pm until 2:00am. The restriction is that from 8-2 ONLY off-premise sales (kegs, growlers, six-packs) can occur; NO ON-PREMISE CONSUMPTION! The majority of Montana brewers were unaware of this little allowance.
This brings me to another rant/gripe/amazement/whatever: When you open a brewery in Montana (this has been my experience), you do not get a listing of the rules you must follow. This is also true at the federal level (we're also regulated by the Department of Treasury, by the way). Isn't it in every one's best interest if the rules of the game are known from the git-go?

At any rate, I was thankful and truly awed by the caliber and amount of support Montana breweries received from our faithful public:
THANK YOU!!!
Until next time,
Your Humble Brewer

Bit of a side note.....

Ya' know, I wasn't always a brewer. There was a time in my life when I sported a mohawk. True, that was way back in high school wrestling (2nd in my division, senior year Thank You!) . But a mohawk all the same. It wasn't until my second year in college that I met James. I imagine the above picture is what he looked like as a baby.
When I met him he looked more like this:
or was it this:
or maybe this:At any rate, James was sportin' quite the mohawk. I met him playing pool. He was an intimidating 130 pounds. As the years rolled by, I ended up being a raft guide with him on the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs. He didn't have a mohawk at this time but he had not lost the "rebel" mentality.
I still have memories of him leaving his raft (full of paying customers) to commandeer my raft (full of paying customer) by pushing me off the end into the river!
.......Good Times!!!

Anyhoo, I recently heard from James.

Just one sentence.

But that was enough to send me into a novel full of memories. Real friends are like that.
They get it. They know you.

James, if you read this, thanks. I miss you. We had a lot of fun.

Your friend,
Rudolph The Red!

TASTING ROOM RULE CHANGE UPDATE....

I just received notice that after a meeting called by Gov. Schweitzer between the Department of Revenue and the Montana State Brewer's Association, the DOR "have offered to rescind the proposed rule from the hearing tomorrow." This is GREAT news for Montana breweries and Montana beer lovers! For those of you keeping track; as of this blog entry, we have collected more than 900 signatures on our online and paper petition. A great number of the online petition entries carried comments supporting not only the defeat of this rule change but to expand our current hours of service.
THANK YOU ALL who showed support for your Montana Breweries!!

PROST!!!
Dave

THINGS TO DO IN POLSON.....

MIGHTY KERR DAM!


Okay, this is a bit of a cheat of a blog entry. But I thought it was kinda neat. I went down to Kerr Dam recently and was treated to this show. Don't often get to see the gates open.

"AND THE AWARDS GO TO....."

From the "Better-Late-Than-Never" department, we received our awards from the latest Garden City Brewfest in Missoula. This took place back in May. Good 'ole GBC walked away with two awards: Best Specialty Ale and Best Light Hybrid Ale. I enjoy brewfests, trouble is I don't get to very many these days as I haven't quite gotten the nerve up to chew through my leg because I'm shackled to the brewhouse! The summer is our busiest time of the year. If only we could spread some of the summertime business to the rest of the year!

In years past, I was the only brewer and cellarman. Well, those of you that know GBC know that we have been growing our Jim over the last couple of years. When he first started, all he had was a desire to learn more about the whole operation. He has endured many mind-numbing hours ensuring the kegs are sanitized, he has learned how to rack into the kegs, how to run our labeler, how to deal with me, and most importantly; Jim is becoming a fine assistant brewer. This provides a nice release valve for me. While I'm attending to one of the other thirteen-thousand details of this business (like writing the blog), Jim is able to continue with that day's brew. I give him a lot of grief (mostly about being from Wyoming) but I do appreciate him and his efforts quite a bit. Jim and his wife are in the process of opening up a storefront in Ronan, Montana for their screenprinting business, Image Quest. They do quality work, their prices are fair, and they have very reasonable turn-around times. Check out their website if you're in the market for custom-printed clothing: http://www.imagequesttees.com/.

Well, we have a new specialty in the tasting room, at least for a few more days. This one is called Sebastian's Select. I infused a few kegs of uncarbonated Oktoberfest with nitrogen gas. We pour it through a special faucet most people know as a "Guiness tap". What this does is to push the beer through small holes drilled in a disc inside the tap. The beer is agitated enough for the nitrogen gas to be "ripped out" of the solution. The nitrogen bubbles are much smaller and stronger than carbon dioxide bubbles. Also, since our atmosphere is composed of mostly nitrogen, these bubbles don't experience the pressure gradient that CO2 bubbles do and therefore are not as willing to pop. Bottom line is the bubbles form a thick, creamy head of foam. This action also pulls a lot of the hop oils out of solution so when you take a sip, you get a somewhat hoppy foam first and then a very smooth liquid body! YUMMIE!!! I put this on tap yesterday and every other pint I poured was the Sebastian's. Sebastian, by the way, is the name of our brewhouse. I didn't name it that. It named itself. As with all our seasonals, get in here soon or you'll miss out!
Until next, I remain your humble brewer.

State Of The State

Unless, you've been living under a log lately, you have probably heard about the "HOP CRISIS" (I use capitals so you understand the importance!!). If not it goes like this: the hop suppliers have been sitting on a hop surplus the past few years, this surplus has artificially driven the price of hops down, breweries have been buying these cheaper hops, the hop farmers can't meet the payments on their John Deere so they either: A)Get our of hop farming or B)they stay in hop farming but don't expand their planted acreage. Either way, the surplus gets used up due to increased demand. Oh yeah, world-wide hop harvest get decimated by diseases, drought, too much rain, or all of the above. Once again, whatever the cause the result is the same: Crappy Hop Harvests! So now, the average price of hops (if you can find any to buy) has gone from about $4.80 per pound to about $39.00 per pound. Let me type that out so there is no misunderstanding: four dollars and eighty cents per pound to thirty nine dollars per pound!!!

WTF!!!

Never before has the modern beer industry been faced with such an attack on one of their principles: hops! Toss into this whole mess the federal government's REQUIREMENT that breweries are to include hops in their beer for it to be considered beer at the rate of 7 pounds per 100 barrels (one barrel equals 31 gallons). Because breweries large and small are "allowed" to manufacture beer by the federal government and beer is defined by said entity as having seven pounds for every 100 barrels, it does feel like the small brewery's hands are somewhat tied. There are over 30 other plants besides hops that have been used to bitter beer but they have not be "recognized" by the feds as being an ingredient in beer. Myself, well, I'm looking at supplementing our hops supply by brewing a beer with some hops AND spruce tips. These are the new growth of Colorado Blue and Green Spruce Trees. I'm new in the whole "spruce tips" world but I'm very curious to see how my test batch of "spruce beer" turns out.
Oh yea, I'm also entertaining ideas for our next specialty brew. Please understand that it won't be an IPA or anything else really hoppy. Sorry, just not gonna happen. If you have any thoughts, tell me or email me or call me or slip a note under the door.
Well, the brewhouse has already started to heat up for the summer; freakin' roasting in there. So I guess we're on that seasonal treadmill once again!
Until next time,
Your Humble Brewer