So there was a quick change in the weather….so I had to harvest my hops. I have two Nugget hops bines in the back, in a raised bed garden. Full sun all day, good soil, and great hops. With the quick change, some of the bines went straight brown. So I had to harvest in a hurry.
I got home, did some quick snipping, and then just sat and picked hops for almost 2 hours. In “wet weight”, I got over 4 pounds. I didn’t pick carefully, as the sun was going down. I think had I gotten a good harvest time, and picked carefully, I would have gotten 10 pounds easily.
Enter the new vacuum sealer! For a recent birthday present, I got a hop grower’s dream machine, the Sinbo DZ-280. It seals, and re-seals mylar bags. I packaged up the hops in roughly 10-12 oz bags using the gallon size mylar bags.
Ok, back to brewing. I made a quick SMaSH recipe. I used 6 pounds of pale malt dried extract, and just a little over a full pound of my freshly picked wet Nugget hops. I did hop additions every 10 minutes, starting at 60 minutes of the boil, five ounces at right at the start, and about two ounces each interval. I added a final ounce at flameout.
I decided to try the SMaSH style, single malt and single hops, to really get the full effect of my homegrown Nugget hops. I have never made a SMaSH beer before, but figured I would give it a shot. Let’s let it ferment for a while, then see what is up! The original gravity was a paltry 1.048, so it will be more of a session beer most likely.
