This team thread is just about dead , but just in case any actual homebrewers drop by, I have just started a new Yahoo Group exclusively about growing hops, so if you grow them or have ever thought about doing it, please join us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grow-Hops

I started the group well less than 24 hours ago, and I've already had 18 other brewers join ... so it looks like there is some interest out there. Hopefully it will become a great resource for hop gardeners.

RE the WCG, we've now slipped down to #72, but I did notice that our team's points over the past five days have picked up a little bit compared to the previous week. Please keep up the good work.

Thanks.

Thanks, Sarge. Just got back from a basketball tournament; my son's team took 1st place, and I'm having a couple of homebrews to celebrate. Found that I didn't have any cold ones in the frig, but one of the nice things about my homebrew is that I like it at room temp, too.

My new 'Grow-Hops' group is already up to 81 members, so anyone who is interested in growing hops really ought to check it out -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Grow-Hops

Had a mishap, followed up by what I think was a big blunder on my part on Friday night. First, I dropped my hydrometer while rinsing it off in the sink, and it broke -- so I have no idea what the original gravity was of the beers that I was in the process of making. Second, because I couldn't check the gravity of my batches, I didn't bother trying to figure out if I needed to make any adjustments between batches, and this was a triple partigyle. What that means is that I used a much larger than normal quantity of grain in my mash tun in order to make three batches of successively weaker beer. However, the first runnings (the draining of the liquid before any rinsing) would naturally have a higher amount of sugar -- meaning higher alchol -- than a normal recipe, and should no doubt have been cut a bit (diluted) by some of the weaker runnings (obtained by rinsing the grains with water). I was making a clone of Sierra Nevada's "Big Foot" from the first runnings, a regular beer from the second runnings, and a lighter beer from the third and final runnings. I'm calling them 'Big Foot', 'Foot', and 'Little Foot'. Anyway, with first runnings from 26 pounds of grain and no measurement or adjustment, I can only imagine that my "Big Foot" might possibly come in at around 14% alcohol while my "Little Foot" is liable to be a pitiful 2.5%, which is definitely not what I intended. I guess I'll have to blend the beers after fermentation is finished, but even if I go out a buy a hydrometer before then, it will be nothing more than a guessing game since I don't know what the original gravities were. I guess I'll have to just do it by trial and error and taste tests -- and probably get half-looped while doing it.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Thanks, Dave, for handling that part. I haven't been too good at keeping up with the team stats to notice when we get new members.

I hope that if any of them are 'bona fide' homebrewers (brewing their own beer or ale), that they'll mention that and we can compare notes, so to speak.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Well, this group is pretty well dead. I'm bottling my BigFoot clone today, and my hop plants are coming along fine. My 'Grow-Hops' group is up to 224 members.

Cheers.

Thanks for dropping by, Adywebb. I have nice plump hops on my bines now, so I'll probably try brewing within the week using some fresh 'wet hops'. Have never had a chance to try that before, but I've read that it can make some delicious beer. Just put a new recruitment post on the beer usergroups; maybe we can get a few more folks crunching for humanity.

Cheers.

Bill Velek