Another hot weekend in Portland meant that the urge to brew was minimal...despite penning a porter recipe from the leftovers that I have on hand that actually looks REALLY good. Perhaps a night brew session is in order sometime soon. I did manage to get half of my Belgian Dubbel into bottles. The plain version came in at 8.5% and is probably a bit rich for a true Dubbel In the meantime, I thought I'd check in with the hops.
Below is the hot zone. South side of the house on hot year such as this might be a bit much for them to take. Then again, they are all also first years, so that might be just as much of what can be seen as well. The 5 bines are: Newport, Northern Brewer, Crystal, Sterling, and Chinook. If I'm lucky, that's the L-R order, but I can only guarantee the Chinook which is easy to remember because it took off like a cat with its tail on fire. I'm sure Comcast appreciates me making their line look a bit prettier.
The hops in the part of the yard shown below seem a bit happier, especially the Cascade, which is on its second year. The Cascade is the prolific looking one to the back. The string in the foreground has a Willamette on it. Both have started flowering. I'm going to have to relocate most of these in some manner though for next year - there's just not enough room here if they all grow like the Cascade (the top tier box) did.
