We’re going to give this whole “growing hops thing” another go. Unruffled by our meager/nonexistent harvest last year, we have transplanted our hop plants to Jeff’s yard. Now they’re out of the pots, off of the volleyball court, and in the ground. We also fertilized with some composting spent grains which probably won’t make much [...]

Tomorrow is arts-and-crafts day at Jeff’s house! Joel will be building out a fermentation chamber for our new conical fermenters. The chamber will involve an insulated box that ducts cold air from our freezer, similar to the one built here by the Duo Team.
And while Joel is doing his best to not kill himself, I [...]

Joel’s connecting flight to Atlanta was delayed last night, so we had another productive brewing session without him meddling in the “grown-up affairs.” We brewed another batch of our Swashchuckler IPA in anticipation of the March 15 party (mark your calenders – invitations coming soon). I feel good about this batch. For one, we were [...]

Stories of the hops – and rumored increases in beer prices – have found their way onto NPR. Kristen sent in this report, which discusses the decreases in hops production and what that means for microbreweries (I’ll give you a hint: it’s bad). We at MNB have dealt with the hops shortages in our own [...]

Some of you may have noticed a deficiency of posts about our homegrown hops of late. This is because my hops have been experiencing a deficiency of their own. I’ve been hoping that they would turn their season around (much like Vince Young turned the Titans’ season around last year), but I think it’s about [...]

The firstfruits of our hop-growing endeavors:

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Monday we used the most loose-leaf hops (which is actually a flower) we’ve ever used during a boil. Usually we use a lot of hop pellets in the boil and reserve loose-leaf for dry-hopping. Things were going great. Joel was even keeping his nose out of everything so that the grown-ups could work.
So then [...]