Hopalicious

I couple months ago I happen to be at my local brew shop and they were selling fresh hop rhizomes. I thought hell why not? In a couple years I could be brewing homemade beer using home grown hops ! I bought 3 cascade and 2 golding rhizomes which were all they had of these particular types. Turns out 1 golding died when the vine somehow snapped at the base, and 1 cascade was eaten by an animal. Still I managed to grow 2 vines per type. My first hop cone grew in a few days ago on one of the cascade vines so I had to take a picture. I'm really glad I decided to plant these.

Smoke on the Porter (Frankenstein II)

I threw together a recipe using all my left overs... strangely enough the ingredient list resembles a porter recipe I found online that used rauch, peat, chocolate, black patent, and flaked barley. I just bought the London Ale III and hops and I was ready to go. The foaming, chocolate brown wort tasted delicious.

ingredient list
3.0 lbs. rauch
2.0 lbs. munich
1.0 lbs. 2 row
1.0 lbs. caramel 20L
1.0 lbs. caramel 60L
1.0 lbs. peat
1.0 lbs. chocolate
0.5 lbs. black patent
0.5 lbs. cara pils
0.5 lbs. vienna
0.5 lbs. flaked barley
1.0 oz. pearle 60 minutes
1.0 oz. kent goldings 30 minutes
1.0 oz. fuggles 15 minutes
1318 Wyeast London Ale III

I bought a plastic bucket with an attached spigot, which came in handy while sparging since now I don't need to siphon the sparge water.