About a year I got my brew stand and have been doing little things here and there to make it work for me, keep in mind everything is manual on it; I don’t have any controls or starters, just manual gauges and 2 pumps.  I’ll eventually get fancy like my buddy Billy over at Homebrew Academy with his recent Brutus build, but for now I there isn’t enough free time to go that route.  However, I can imagine that I have $1500 laying around that I could spend on the Blichmann Tower of Power.

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So you have decided to make the commitment to growing your own hops. You bought the rhizomes, you put them in the ground, and now they are starting to grow like Audrey in the Little Shop of Horrors. What to do now,  it is actually pretty simple.  The first thing is to build a trellis, there are many different types, most have some type of twine that the bine can wrap around up 20-30′.  (I’m building a new trellis this year, so I will discuss that in another post.)  Hops grow very quickly, up to 12″ a week so it is best to be prepared.

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Tuesday had us homebrewers all geared up to register our beers for this year’s NHC, National Homebrewers Competition.  There are only a limited number of spots for each region of the country and many of us wanted to get our registrations in early so that we could get our beers in to our local region of choice and avoid getting shut out, like many did for the National Hombrewers Convention.  With thousands of homebrewers slamming the servers at 1pm on Tuesday, the AHA’s new registration site just couldn’t take the load, shutting most homebrewers out of the site for over an hour.

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Finally after many years of wanting to attend the National Homebrewers Conference, I’m finally going to make it.  This year I have no excuses since it is going to be right down the Turnpike from me in Philly. I’ve been wanting to attend NHC for years, seeing many of by brew friends attend, there tweets and Facebook posts; I wanted to be right there with them. But it had never worked out for me, be it timing, money, or just life.

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Last night my family and I were out to eat at one of my favorite beer bars, The Cloverleaf Tavern.  Wednesdays are kids night so it is a great excuse to get out of the house to have 2 great craft beers and spend some nice time with my wife and kids.  Little did I know going to the bathroom after dinner was going to land me smack-dab in the middle of some serious guy code violations!

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Two weeks ago we had our second Beer Dinner at the Pig and Prince in Montclair NJ.  Each month I’ll be selecting 5 beers and Chef Mike Carrino will be creating 5 courses to go with the beer.  Chef Mike completely out did himself with this dinner, the food and beer pairings were amazing.  Here are some photo’s from January’s dinner.  If you like what you see, the next dinner will be Feb 12th, welcoming back Captain Lawrence to NJ featuring all Captain Lawrence Beers! For Reservations for the next beer dinner, call 973-233-1006.

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