a break in the routine ....

and a very welcome one, at that! Today, I headed up to Johnson City to a guy's house that I met through HomebrewTalkForums that is growing his own hops. Upon finding this out, I emailed him with the intent to purchase some rhizomes from him and pick his brain about process as I am wishing to grow some of my own. After a few correspondences I found he was planning on transplanting his hops. I offered to help and he accepted.

I made arrangements with Melissa and Megan to tend to Dad in my absence and headed out at 7:30 AM. Yes, 7:30 AM! This put me at his house at 9:00.

I packed two of my Bock beers and two of my "IPA"s and brought them along for him to sample at his leisure. Not knowing what style of beer he preferred, I only brought two of each in case he didn't like them.

I pull in his driveway and we exchange introductions and pleasantries and then he shows me what he has going on. He is about to go full-scale production as the previous two years have been doing test runs to see what he could do and what to expect. He has a few acres on his property and about half of that is locked up in hop beds.

He has a separate bed set up for each different hop variety he is going to plant. Each bed is 15' X 30'. He has Liberty, Mount Hood, Chinook, Nugget, Spaalt Special, and a few other varieties.

Oh boy! what did I get myself into?   ; )   To further complicate matters, about half the area is full of rock that needs to be extricated.

Once the "tour" was over, he showed me what he wanted me doing and we set about getting it done. My job was to remove a row of hops from one bed to place them in another,  less rocky, bed. This was a slow process as I was using a shovel and was exercising extreme care not to break any roots.

Meanwhile he was busy excavating rocks from the other beds with his tiller and a Bobcat he rented. Once he finished with that, he brought the bobcat over and started digging up the hop plants. This made the job go much quicker as he was able to place the bucket under the plant and bring up the whole root ball with minimal damage. Sweet! this went faster and was much more effective.

We soon had about 20 plants or so sitting in the creek waiting to be put back in the ground plus the 9 I already had dug up and re-planted. That finished off one row. We put these in the ground and topped off with some nutrient-rich soil.

We could not have ordered any better weather! It was a cloudless, sunny day (boy that's just a bit redundant) and temps in the 60s although it felt warmer. What was tough to take was listening to all the bikes out playing.

Damn, it made me sooo wish my little Bandit was up and running. I wanted to go join 'em!

By now, it's a little after noon, and Chris proclaims it's beer-thirty. Me never being one to argue that premise, gladly participated in such a ritual. He tried one of my Bocks and offered me an Omegang (a NY brewery) ale that had more head on it than ale. He told me they infuse their bottles with CO2 to achieve such a thick head.

The beer was pretty good. It was rather mellow with a nice finish. He took one sip of my Bock and was nearly "floored". He really liked it and we started making deals to trade hops for beer (he doesn't brew, just grows hops ... what?!?).

He was funny. He stated that he usually doesn't like anything but Belgian ales, but that this was just *awesome* and he kept on sippin' and raving about it.  He told me next time I brewed that to set some back and I could have a free run of his hops field.  "If you're going to brew beer like this, you need to make sure you have a good supply of hops"      LOL   

We then re-planted those and dug up the next row. Unfortunately, we ran out of nutrient-rich dirt/fertilizer to continue re-planting any further. We spent the rest of the afternoon removing rocks from the new hop beds and putting landscape cloth over the hops we had planted.

After finishing up outside we went inside and he poured himself another Bock. Since it was nearly time for me to head home, I declined. While he happily sipped on it, we discussed brewing, beers, and hops.

Among the topics I mentioned that the IPA I brought was not a "true" IPA. It just doesn't have enough hoppy bitterness to make the style. This encouraged him since he is not a fan of hoppy beers. Cracks me up, he *grows* hops and doesn't like a hop-heavy beer?

After a bit of discussion, he decides to try a bit of it. Again, he is impressed!

Before I left, he set me up with the rhizomes I asked for .... and THEN some! I only wanted maybe 3 or 4 to see what they would do. He gave me about 20 of them, and loaded me down with some hops from last season's harvest ... nearly 2 1/2 pounds of hops total! So I know have some Mount Hood, Liberty, Nugget, and Spaalt select hops at my disposal sitting in the freezer awaiting a recipe to be used in.

What a great day! It was topped off with a shake and a chili dog from Cook Out. I haven't seen one of them in years and absolutely *love* their shakes ... they are awesome!

As great a day as it was, I must admit that I am moving around really slow and I have to put *my* rhizomes in the ground tomorrow!   ; )