Here’s my recipe (and a little story for you):
First off, FML is an acronym for Fresh Mystery Lupulin. Back in the spring of 2017, I bought six different varieties of rhizomes - a couple from Big Spruce and a couple from Bramble Hill Farm in NS - Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Magnum, Nugget and Willamette. I brought 4 varieties to my in-laws to plant near their garden in St. Louis-de-Kent, NB, and another 4 varieties to my Dad to plant in his garden in Oak Point, NB, telling him to make sure he knew which rhizome was which when he planted them.
Well, the hopyard in St. Louis did not take off at all, but the one in Miramichi did... but Dad had no idea which plant was which (it’s hard to get good help these days). They have since redone their backyard and told me to get rid of the hops, so I planted them around my yard in Dieppe, where they are now thriving... but I have absolutely no idea what has survived at this stage. But my good lord do they smell amazing.
I had brewed a couple half decent IPAs with them in the past, but I always found it challenging to get the same intense hop flavor from them that you get from pellets (despite using a ton of them). My process is usually to harvest and separate the cones, lay them out on a screen, and air dry them with a fan for a few days. Then I vacuum-seal them with a foodsaver, and stick ‘em in the freezer until I am ready to brew. I honestly don’t know how they process them like the hop pellets you buy, but I haven’t quite nailed it yet.
My homebrewing friends in Ottawa and Calgary suggested I might have more luck if I tried chopping them up/running them through a food processor. I tried this for some of them (but after they are dried it is harder to manipulate them as they are so lightweight, so I had to add a tiny but of water to help for this process) and the resulting paste was very fragrant and promising. I also chopped up all the cones I used for the rest - my knife was yellow and sticky with lupulin.
So even with that the resulting beer has a pretty low hop character... one of my favourites is the Duvel tripel hop, but this ain’t anything like that at all... but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Between the friggin’ and jiggin’ with the fresh hops, and the longer step mash (and the last-minute addition of some homemade syrup), it was a real labour of love (but really, isn’t all homebrew?)
6300 g Pilsner Malt
Mash water 20.5 l
Sparge water 12.5 l
Mash schedule:
15 mins at 95 F step to
15 mins at 122 F
15 mins at 131 F
30 mins at 144 F
90 mins at 148 F
Mashed out at 170 F for 10 minutes.
90 minute boil
1 lb Belgian rock candy sugar
1 lb homemade syrup (I more or less followed this process here -- How to make Belgian Candi Sugar | An Engineer and His Carboy (wordpress.com) -- but didn’t let the mixture fully harden before I added it because I started doing this shortly after mashing in.
76 g processed hop paste @ 60 min
37 g processed hop paste @30 mins
58 g chopped, dried hops @30 mins
58 g chopped, dried hops @ flameout
So, around 8 oz of hops in total. But my hops spider was pretty much full to overflowing by the end of it, even after chopping up the hops.
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