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× search Need Help? Call 313-277-2739 account basket Blog Home Brewing Equipment All Grain Brewing Kegging Beer Recipe Kits Beer Ingredients Wine Making Other Sale Items Info Need Help? Call 800-353-1906 0 Post navigation ← Older posts When to Plan Your Hop Garden Posted on July 1, 2022 by Melynda Falkowski When to Plant Hops One of the basic ingredients in beer is also very easy to grow. Hops will thrive in most moderate climates. Learning how to plant and care for Hops is easy and rewarding with your own homebrew hops garden. The hop plant is a hardy perennial plant. It will grow vines annually from the rootstock. These vines will grow up to 25 feet each season and die back after the harvest. The rhizome is part of the rootstock but posses the buds for propagation. Under good conditions, each hop vine will produce 1/2 to 2 pounds of dried flowers. You may be asking, can I plant hops where I live?” The answer is yes…. probably. Hops are hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 through 8. Most of the US in in one of these zones. Here is a USDA Map of the United States that shows exactly where the hardiness zones are. The temperatures are the average minimum temperatures for each area: Even parts of Alaska and Hawaii are suitable for growing your favorite hops. What Time of the Year to Plant Hops Planting months can very from coast to coast. California can probably plant earlier that Maine, but early May for most of the country would be as late as you would want to plant. Hop Rhizomes are typically cut in March or early April. As with all crops, this depends on the weather. If the farmer’s field is too wet, they have to wait for the water to drain. The problem can get worse if the field is still covered in snow. The farmer needs to wait for the snow to melt and then the fields to drain. It is also possible that not all varieties are going to be harvested at the same time. If some of the fields have better weather than others, they will cut rhizomes at different times. Adventures in Homebrewing ships their Hop Rhizomes as soon as they arrive from our farmers, which is typically early April. As long as your planting area is out of frost danger, we recommend planting in the ground as soon as you receive them. If your mounds are ready and mulched properly, rhizomes can survive days as cold as 20°. If you have to store the rhizomes for a bit after you receive them, store them in the refrigerator until you are ready to plant. Although most varieties will thrive if you are in a temperate region, there are a few variables you should consider when deciding on a variety of hops. If you are planting your hops simply for their aesthetic value, then you are really free to choose any variety you please. If you are in an area that sees a shorter growing period, you may want to plant a vine that will develop more quickly, allowing you to enjoy your plants for the longest possible period. Growing your own hops is rewarding and exciting. Adventures in Homebrewing can help you get started on this great part of the hobby with your own homebrew hops garden. Shop Hop Rhizomes. Cheers! Posted in Beer Brewing Ingredients , Home Beer Brewing | Tagged beer brewing , beer making , home brewing , make beer at home Why Allowing Your Homemade Wines To Breathe Is Important… Posted on February 10, 2021 by AIH I made my first wine and it came out great. I made a Cabernet Sauvignon from one of your homemade wine kits . I started it in January and aged it with oak chips for 6 month. Then bottled. It still tastes a little young. Something I do not understand is that it taste better after I let it sit out for a few hours. Why does it improve when left out? Jason —– Hello Jason, Thanks for the great question! I believe you have stumbled upon something that is, in large part, ignored by most home wine makers. What we are talking about is allowing the wine to breathe . It is important to understand what is meant when we say breath in this context. We are not talking about taking breaths as a living thing would, but rather, we are talking about decanting the wine and allowing it to react to the air. The wine is being freed from the suffocating confines of a wine bottle and cork. To let the wine breathe the bottle is normally poured into a carafe. The wine is simply allowed time to sit. But unlike the hours you mentioned, the wine only needs to be given maybe 10 or 15 minutes when using a carafe. If you are just popping the cork from the wine bottle the effect will take longer and not be quite as dramatic. Using a carafe significantly cuts down how long you need to let the wine breathe. When allowing a wine to breathe some chemistry takes place. First, fumes release from the wine. Any off, volatile gases that may have built up while in the wine bottle are given the time to release and dissipate. Also, the natural bouquet or aroma of the wine is also allowed time to develop and blossom. The second process is the wine starts a subtle, oxidative exchange with the air. This reduces the harshness of the wine’s tannin structure. It rounds-off the rough edges of the wine’s flavor. This gives the wine a more mellow character. Both of these processes can dramatically alter the character of the wine. The operative word here is can”. Sometimes allowing a wine to breathe can cause just as much damage as it can help. In some cases, it may make no difference at all. For example, older wines that have fully aged tend not to do to well when allowed to breathe. Their tannin structure is more fragile and more susceptible to collapsing. This will cause the wine to take on a flat or flabby character. The better wine candidate is a younger, red wine. One with a lot of body and tannin, but has not yet had enough time to take fully advantage of aging. This brings us back to the Cabernet Sauvignon you made: a lot of tannic structure with layers of flavors waiting to be developed. To sum up, allowing your wines to breathe is something I suggest you experiment with, but you don’t need to let your wine sit out all night. It’s not necessary. A half hour is the maximum amount of time I would recommend. And, don’t automatically allow all wines time to breath, only do so with fuller-bodied, red wines that can still use some aging. Happy Winemaking, Ed Kraus —– Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years. Posted in Wine 7 MORE Random Wine Making Facts Posted on February 9, 2021 by AIH A few days ago we posted the blog, 7 Random Wine Making Facts…” . It had such a great response I decided to put some more wine making facts into a post. These are trivial little pieces of information that randomly shoot off into different areas of wine and winemaking. Some of them you may already know, but do you know them all? A single packet of wine yeast multiplies itself many times over during a fermentation. That little 5 gram packet of wine yeast you put into your fermentation will typically regenerate itself by 100 to 200 times. Most of the growth happens during the first 3 to 5 days of fermentation. This is what it takes to have a vigorous fermentation. All grape juice starts out clear. If you go out into the vineyard and lightly squeeze a wine grape of any color: red, blue, purple, black, green, yellow… you will get the same color grape juice, clear. Squeeze the same grape harder and roll it between your fingers, and you will notice that the juice coming from the grape is no longer clear. The color starts to release from the skin and join in with the grape juice. The color of the grape juice comes from the grape skin, not the grape juice itself. All wine contains vinegar . This wine making fact throws many for a loop, but no matter whose wine it is, who made it, or where you got or bought it, the wine has vinegar in it. This is because vinegar, also known as acetobacter, is a...