REINHEITSGEBOT!! (Bless you . . .)

 I came across an interesting discussion the other day,  whose topic was -Why are German beers so different from their American counterparts? Short answer : Reinheitsgebot! (sneeze!)

 

  Reinheitsgebot is one of the first and oldest consumer protection laws ever passed. It is usually referred to as the German beer purity law and was first proposed in 1487 (no typo!) and passed into law in the year of our Lord 1516.  It simply stated that it was illegal to put anything except water, barley, and hops into beer. It was updated and amended into the Provisional German Beer Law which allowed the additions of yeast, wheat malt, and sugar cane (but banned unmalted barley).

  Hops were specifically mentioned in Reinheitsgebot not only for adding flavor but also acting as a preservative. Midieval brewers did not have the preservative thing down pat and were killing their fellows by adding stuff like chimney soot, poisonous mushrooms, and various herbs to their brews in an effort to preserve the beer. These additions to brewing are now called "adjuncts". ( I always remember it as "Added JUNK".)  The German purity law basically says that if you add other junk to your brew; you cannot label and sell it as real beer.  These provisions are still adhered to today by many brewers- but not all.

  In America; where bigger, faster, and cheaper are king - the use of adjuncts is the norm.

Large brewers use large amounts of corn and rice (among lots of other things like artificial flavoring, corn syrup, colors ,dyes, juices, extracts, etc.) in an effort to produce the most beer for the lowest cost. They use just enough of the Reinheitsgebot ingredients to flavor their brews without having to re-label it a malt liquor. ( Malt liquors are completely based on the fermentation of corn and rice.)

  So, the next time you tip a Bud or a Coors against an imported German Pilsner, realize you are actually comparing a near malt liquor (flavored to taste like beer) to the real thing. Kinda like comparing a can of Spagettios to real Italian spagetti . . . Which leads to twisted thinking like- If you were born and raised only on spagettios; are they now better than the "real" thing? (Ponder that over a pitcher, or two.) But you do have to respect the big  brewers for being able to pull off a brew that is almost entirely water and still have a 3.5 to 5.5 % alcohol content. Amazing!

  Thank goodness that the craft brewers have re-discovered Reinheitsgebot and its brewing principals.  Brew on!
                 
                             

And now, you too are -    "an informed drinker or an educated drunk."
see more @ http://www.greatlakeshops.com/

Hop plants for sale?

 
  I constantly wonder what drives this craft brewing revival. Is it just a re-discovery by a new generation - " something old is now is something new"? Is it a inner compulsion to create something that you can take pride in - "I made that"? Is it that desire of little boys to get that mad scientist chemistry set - (and being brave enough to drink the resulting concoction)? What ever it is, it is not a bunch of cheap drunks - in fact the level of sophistication amazes me.
  This "trend" seems to be no flash in the pan, and you can quickly see that just by looking at the drop in the big brewers sales numbers. The number of craft brewers is expanding rapidly.  Unfortunately, along with all interest in brewing, a few bad things have popped up along the way and you should be aware of them. One of the biggest IMHO is "hop plants for sale"- the topic of this blog.

  This crazy rush of of what I call brewers frenzy has created a haphazard conglomeration of hop seed, plant, and rhizome resellers via the Internet.  Everybody wants to cash in - but there are no rules or standards, and there are no "Plant Police".  A major issue is that there are hundreds of beer hop cultivers grown, but most are indistinguishable from each other. There are relatively few actual producers of hop rhizomes, fewer yet who grow the hop plants, and very few who certify what they sell; and almost nobody propagates virus indexed stock with proven identities.  This has resulted in a "wild-west" market of hop plant material that has no standards for true identification or disease. (Basically, there are a lot of people out there selling mutts as pedigreed hounds.) 

 

Case in point :

  This season I wanted to compare what we do at Great Lakes Hops with our Inernet- based competitors.   I ordered a similar selection of hop rhizomes from as many places as I could find. The goal was to compare service, quality, and value of purchase. I made 4 purchases from resellers, 3 from grower/ producers in February and waited.  All were prepay, I had no problem with that, but a couple of orders didn't show til late May, and the last one showed up in mid June. What I recieved for the money spent did not impress me. The grower/producer rhizomes were the quickest to arrive and were by far the best quality. The ones associated with the Nation Clean Plant Program were the best. The resellers rhizomes arrived - many were shrivelled, moldy and dry. They looked like they had been stored for a long period, and  some obiviously had been cut in half!  Many of these had no buds showing - resembling little dead sticks. At $4.50 each, they were no deal. The hop plants arrived last -  3" high, single stem plants at $10 dollars each. Pretty expensive, but they had varieties the others did not have. However, all the soil had shaken off the roots and the plants were not looking good.
   I am a professional Horticulturist with 25 years in the plant growing business and  I  receive plant material from literally world-wide.  Many are cuttings of plants with no roots at all when I receive them.  IMHO, if anyone had a good chance of starting these, it should be me.  I planted them out as they came in; putting the Cascades next to Cascades, Fuggle next to Fuggle, Chinook next to Chinook - you get the picture.  The direct producer plant material came up pretty reliably; the resellers rhizomes were weak and only about 3/4ths ever emerged. The little plants pretty much stalled out in the heat of July and stared back at me. But I was okay with that - I just wish they had arrived earlier! But what developed with the rhizomes as the season progressed really suprised me.
  I started noticing differences - One Cascade didn't look like the others, Centennials had dark leaf types and light green leaf types, the Fuggles all grew differently, the Magnum from one place has green stems, and from the other place had red stems, Kent Golding was healthy or sickly. What was going on?  This started out as a simple competitors check, but some thing else was going on. So I decided to plant them out alongside our test plot and compare them to our stock plants as they grew side by side. (I should have taken pictures.)
  I have watched them all summer and have two basic conclusions. Number 1:BEWARE! A lot of these plants are not the varieties they claim to be!  Apparently, somebody out there is just throwing rhizomes in a bag and are calling them whatever, just to get the money.  Number 2: There is a lot of diseased junk out there. Lack of plant vigor and virus expression in the hop leaves was common. Only the rhizomes direct from grower/producers were comparable to our virus indexed stock.
  

   I feel pretty good about what what we do at Great Lakes Hops. I am trying to supply healthy Hop plants that adhere to the National Clean Plant Standards. I encourage you to check out our hop growing at http://www.greatlakeshops.com/ to see for yourself. I am not trying to sell you here, but please consider your source carefully before you purchase hop plants or rhizomes. You can't grow healthy hops and brew a great beer if you start with junk!  Brew on!

Done for the season? Not quite. Time to fertilize!

  Things are winding down to a slower winter pace at Great Lakes Hops. 
 The hops are settling in for the cold. They are setting their crown buds nicely - I checked them the other day. Heavy buds show the promise of a good up coming spring season.
  I plan on insuring a good start to next season by applying a late fall application of fertilizer. This may sound odd - fertilizing a plant that is totally dormant- but it works.

  "Fertilizing hops improves yield and quality by suppying the plant with ample nutrition in advance of demand." 
  I plan on using a fertilizer like 8-5-15  at a rate of about 35 lbs Nitrogen per acre. (I'll apply another 35 lbs. in the spring of 8-5-5.) If the fertilizer numbers are the percent of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and the bags weigh 50 lbs.; then there should be 4 lbs. N, 2.5 lbs. P, and 7.5 lbs. K in each bag.  So I figure I will need roughly 9 bags per acre to get the job done.
  Why did I select 8-5-15?  I don't want the ratio of N too high - just enough to feed the soil microbes. The Phosphorus will basically sit immobile over the winter and hops don't need a lot of it. But it will be in place when I till it in next spring. The Potassium is the important one - it is taken up by the plant and acts like anti-freeze in the plant roots and buds by preventing the formation of ice crystals in the plant's cells.
  The soil microbe activity will be in slow- mo, but they have all winter to break down the fertilizer into compounds the hop plants can use. The snow melt will slowly move the fertilizer deep in the root zone.  When the plants start to stir in spring the nutrients will be there like a prepared buffet.
  So I am going side dress the rows around the end of November - after Turkey Day.

  I have posted a couple of really good guides for growing and fertilizing Hops at http://www.greatlakeshops.com/.  Check them out under "Docs" in the left margin.