News and updates from D.T.E. Madden, the author of Slow Boil Rising.
I'm past outlining and now in early drafting mode for Slow Boil Rising's sequel. We'll call it SBR2 for now. But while getting in the headspace to draft and bring some very missed characters back to life who I have not written for in months, I took a break to take these nature snaps out in the backyard.
The water was calm, the lighting was great, and the squirrels were scheming. Enjoy!
Here there be hops! They are the flowers of a hearty perennial vine called Humulus lupulus.
2015 was a good year for growing things in Minnesota. We had periods of rain, periods of sun, and it was generally warm. What made this year especially good was that it was generally only cloudy when it rained. So the clouds did not often get in the sun's way for no good reason.
My hops plants were no exception to the positive 2015 trend. And I wanted to share some of the photos Youngeun snapped of me and the hops during part of the hops harvest this fall. She has a great knack for getting me and the hops from only the best of angles!
Taking a step back, I grow hops to use in my own homebrew. (When I am not writing on the weekends, I am often brewing.) I grow two types, Cluster and Cascade. The images you are seeing are of the Cluster variety.
Cluster hops are the first variety of hops that were able to survive in North America. As such, they were the primary bittering agent in most pre-prohibition styles of beer. And I am fond of bringing 17th, 18th, and 19th century recipes back to life with these Cluster hops.
Now, every fall, usually in late August or early-to-mid September, it is time to go out and pick the hops. Here's the pics:
Yes. That is a laundry line repurposed as a hop wire. And there is nothing better for picking hops than a cardboard box tethered to your neck with some jute twine.
Tiny scissors make the work go by nicely. The hops can really wind up around each other.
And after about an hour of picking, here was the end result:
Recently picked hops.
Hops do need to be dried before you can store them, so I created this contraption out of the card board box that brought me my first shipment of Slow Boil Rising books.
As the saying goes: Reduce, reuse, recycle, and poke lots of holes!
Hops drying box Mk0.95b.
Lastly, but not leastly, a picture of the lake, just because it was pretty that day.
Tiny blueberry bushes in their first year in the foreground. The lake in the background.
