Thames Valley Yeast (Again)

On January 31, 2009, a beer was brewed that was intended as a dark variant of a Welsh bitter. The yeast used was Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley. On May 17, 2009, that beer was finally bottled.

Three and a half months in the fermenter. I do not believe that I have ever had a non-lager beer continue working in the fermenter that long and still be unspoiled. At one month, the fermentation lock was still actively turning. Even on bottling day, the beer still had a ring of foam and the lock had not backed.

I admit that I was not optimistic when I began to bottle this beer. I did not even get the bottles ready before transferring the beer to the bottling bucket, as is my normal procedure. I wanted to see if the beer was still unspoiled and I had my doubts.

I should have cast doubt from my mind and kept beer faith. As I transferred the beer to the bottling bucket, I collected a sample. The beer was crystal clear and the taste is very good: malty without excessive sweetness. I encountered none of the harsh astringency or moldy viscosity that I had expected. If anything, the taste was a bit too mild for the intended effect. Although untended, the flavor and body of this beer are that of an excellent dark mild ale.

So why did fermentation take so long? I do not know. I have not been able to find anyone else that has used this yeast so I do not know if painfully slow working is a characteristic. I know only that this yeast worked slowly, but worked well.

It is interesting to note that the final gravity was still a bit high in spite of the long fermentation. Original gravity was 40 and the final was about 16, giving an alcohol content of about three percent. That is just fine with me, I am not into high gravity, I prefer high taste. Once this beer has conditioned in the bottle, I will give a full report.

So I missed the mark a bit in trying to create a dark Welsh bitter, but did create an excellent dark mild ale. I’ll take it.

New Hop Season Looks Good

This year is shaping up to be a great year for hops. We decided to double the size of the hop yard and Dad and I put up some more trellis. Next year we hope to expand even more.

Our first shoots broke through on April 24. The number of shoots that the third-year plants are putting up is bordering on the absurd. It breaks my heart to have to prune such nice strong shoots, but if I left them all I would quickly be overrun by a hop jungle.


This is the first year that we trimmed rhizomes. Trimming rhizomes is recommended as plants are heading into their third summer, so for the first time we had plants that were ready to have their rhizomes trimmed. Once I had dug into the ground around my third-year plants, I was amazed by the amount of growth that had been taking place under ground. Some of the plants had sent rhizomes that went on for several feet, right out of the hop yard! Not only were the rhizomes long, but they were thick and loaded with active buds. I thought back to the scrawny, soggy, cheroot-looking rhizomes I had plunked down five bucks each for (half of which survived) and wondered where that supplier had gotten his.

When the trimming was done, I had a large pail of top quality rhizomes. Free! I had prepared more ground for planting and filled it quickly with the best of the trimmings. I then began looking for other places to plant. No sense wasting good hop rhizomes. We now have hop plants scattered about the property. Flag poles, cherry trees, garden fences: nothing was safe from being hopped. I still have a ton left over! So I am now in the hop rhizome selling business.

As I write this, May 10, my third-year plants are four feet tall with less than a month of growing. My trellis is 13 feet tall and last year the second-year plants topped out in nine weeks. It will be interesting to see how fast they will top out this year. I may need a bigger trellis.

Site Plan

A small vacation and starting a new job kept me from the blog for a bit but now I am back. At our last meeting with the Planning Board, one member took issue with the format in which we presented our application. I admit I was improvising since I had not done a site plan review before. However, I was still disappointed because I felt we had addressed all the relevant points delineated in the site plan review checklist and the town does not provide much guidance on the format they prefer.

The head of the Planning Board then took up discussion and it was agreed that we had most of what they wanted in our application. On a few points, more detail was requested. So to keep the peace and get things moving, we hired a professional to draw up a site plan.

We have the first draft of the site plan and it looks very good. A few small details need to be changed, but nothing critical. The next step is to get on at yet another Planning Board meeting. Hopefully we are close to getting this moving.