Chris brewed the third beer for the Oktoberfest. I showed up around hopback time to pick hops, finish the brew session and clean up. The hop vines were much improved this year.

They were picked and put directly into the hopback for flavor and aroma. This is called wet hopping because the hops had not been dried – they were fresh.

The yield was a bit bigger than normal, so the carboys were topped up and overflowing. As we oxygenated the beer to help the yeast get a vigorous start, we made quite a mess.

Those three carboys joined the other nine that were already fermenting away on the floor. We have a pilsner in the refrigerator for the party, the brown ale that will be dispensed via the hand pump, and now the pale ale. In addition, we have a 2014 first generation sour that is aging in storage, a second generation sour about to go into aging, and a saison that will get treated to some fruit and head for aging as well.

On Sunday we will be brewing another saison. The sours and saisons are beers that will be filling the pipeline for the aging process. We ran out of sours this year and don’t want that to happen again, so we need to keep brewing, so in a year or so, we will have a steady supply of sours with which to experiment.