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"noby":36mdmgog wrote: Speaking of hops, my own first gold has grown to over 6 foot (first year in the ground), and I may get to harvest some cones. At least ten! I'll try to take some photos, and dig out the old hop thread.[/quote:36mdmgog]I think I was very lucky. I planted six Fuggles rhizomes this past spring, so this was both their first year of growth and my first year as a grower. I still managed to harvest very close to 42 ounces DRIED (can't remember the exact grams, but it was close to 1190 grams). That is actually less than what is normally produced by established plants, so I hope to double or even triple that crop next year.

Cheers.

Bill Velek
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Luckily you, that’s one hell amount of hops you have,

That's great and Fuggles is a lovely variety.

Love the avatar by the way.

Yes, I seem to have been fortunate, but for the amount that I brew it's still not enough. I haven't bothered to keep records, but I'm sure that I brew at least 30 to 40 batches a year. I probably brew close to three times a month, and very often they are double-headers -- two batches in the same brew session -- sometimes as a partigyle, and sometimes as two separate mashes. Anyway, someday I'd like to build a system with a hop-back, and then I'd REALLY need a lot of hops.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Hi Bill,

Small world. <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: -->

&amp;quot;billvelek&amp;quot;:2xpim3x8 wrote: I'm going to buy "Designing Great Beers" the next time I get down to my local homebrew shop, and then maybe I'll actually start to do things right. <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->[/quote:2xpim3x8]

That is an excellent book but my problem with is that he tends to use statistics from homebrew competitions as a guide to style. I'd strongly question this since it is more likely to be a guide to what homebrewers do in an attempt to win competitions. However, he does include data from commercial breweries so you have the choice of which information (and conclusions) to ignore. For example, if I was brewing an English Pale Ale style beer I'd never use Cascade or similar US hops nor would I use a complex malt bill, maybe 100% pale malt.

&amp;quot;Les_Howarth&amp;quot;:1e2evm6y wrote:

&amp;quot;billvelek&amp;quot;:1e2evm6y wrote: I'm going to buy "Designing Great Beers" ... snip[/quote:1e2evm6y]
That is an excellent book but my problem with is that he tends to use statistics from homebrew competitions as a guide to style. I'd strongly question this since it is more likely to be a guide to what homebrewers do in an attempt to win competitions. ...snip[/quote:1e2evm6y]Thanks for the feedback, Les. I don't know if there is another book that can be recommended for perhaps designing beers more to 'traditional' characteristics rather than for winning competitions, but I wonder about your point of view for this reason: competitions are usually judged by certified beer judges who I would presume generally follow beer guidelines quite closely. I'm sure there are errors and even deliberate exceptions, so perhaps there has been some 'evolution' of styles over the years; I don't really know, but this seems like a way for me to learn to design better beer using my software, and to do so closer to what the 'experts' claim it should be. However, you are not the first brewer to mention that concern to me -- that it is based too much on homebrew competitions -- and I've also read where even that info is somewhat dated. My biggest shortcoming in this area is that I don't have any experience with a large variety of commercial beer styles; living in a mostly rural area in the southern U.S., it is not as cosmopolitan here (hell, I actually live in a dry county -- illegal to sell any kind of alcohol here except in private clubs) -- and the largest liquor store I've found (next county) has a very limited selection of 'craft' beers. Sure, I can get Pilsner Urquel and St. Pauli's Girl and other well-known imports, but I won't be able to find any examples at all of many beer styles. Anyway, I'll get a copy as soon as I can.

Thanks.