The Brew from Scratch Project. 2.0

Last year my plan to home brew a batch of beer entirely from scratch came to grief. Deer ate the entire barley crop.  An unexpected fence replacement cut the hop production back by 90%.  Note:  Hops being effectively a weed, it is hard to stop its growth.  But I'm going to give it another try.  Infrequent updates ahead.

25 May, 2019.  Hops vines headed up the nice new back fence.  These are Cascade hops if you are keeping score.

Last year I put in a patch of barley at my son's acreage outside of town.  The deer moved in immediately.  This time, for a small expense, I just took an extra plot at our local community garden.  It has a fence.  "Full Pint" seemed a good variant to plant.  I hope a pound of seed will be enough.  

July 3rd.

Hops doing very well.

The barley is less encouraging.  It has been a cool, wet season and I probably should have used more seed.  But it is growing.  The red tape on the string is to remind the crew that mows between plots that this is not plain ol' grass but a crop.  When I grew barley many years ago there was some unfortunate confusion...

Oh,  there's some weeds and such in there as well.  I pull out the most egregious ones. But when trying to make an Old Time batch of beer you have to factor in that most farm house breweries used barley that probably had all sorts of other stuff in it.  Adds to the ambiance I hope.

Next update in the fall.