testing the $3 popover pan

While dropping of some stuff at a thrift store I made my usual book and electronics scavenging run and found a nearly mint condition "professional quality" black steel popover pan in the original box for $3! (I was looking at more than books and bits, obviously.) The heavy black steel is supposed to lower the baking temperature by 25 degrees and decrease the baking time by 10% or more.

For starters I tried the recipe on the front of the box. At the time I didn't have any all-purpose flour so I figured I'd experiment with what I had: whole wheat pastry flour and white whole wheat flour. I also added the "speck of soda" penned in by the previous owner. I wasn't surprised when this didn't produce the ideal result. Probably any significant proportion of whole wheat with its jagged shards of bran is going to prevent the batter from capturing the steam that makes the popover pop. They did puff to a degree, but the interior was fairly solid. Still, they were light and tasty, like a whole wheat German pancake.

After restocking the cupboard with unbleached AP flour I tried again, omitting the soda speck. Now that I think about it, the author of that modification surely meant baking powder, not soda. Perfect results this time.

Alton Brown's popover recipe in I'm Just Here For More Food is a little different, adding some butter, using some water and less milk, and using one less egg. I'll have to try that next.

first coffee roast in modified Popcorn Pumper

I cleaned off my work bench the other day, organizing and storing the bazillion fasteners, tools, scraps, instruction manuals, and spare household pets. It was a beautiful blank slate for the first time since we moved in, what, five years ago? And it was literally crying out for projects!

While cleaning up the rest of the garage I found the Popcorn Pumper, which I haven't used for roasting coffee since finding the Poppery II. Seemed like a good time to toy with a few modifications. I started small, simply bypassing the thermal switch (and thereby creating a magnificent fire hazard). This is just a matter of soldering a wire between the terminals on either end of the thermostat and fuse, more or less according to this Engadget how-to. This keeps the heating coil on constantly, delivering significantly greater heat. (This great article has more explanation of the circuitry in these things.)

I also made an aluminum chimney to replace the bulky plastic hood, which really does not care for these temperatures. This was just some leftover aluminum roof flashing, rolled and fastened with J-B Weld.

The first trial run was excellent! I took it outside, preheated for a minute, and added enough beans for there to be some agitation but no swirling. I stirred occasionally with a wooden spoon, which is now possible since I can get straight into the chamber. The difference in heat was obvious. Roasting time was greatly reduced, and it's clear that any desired roast can be achieved without baking the beans. The chaff was all blasted directly out the chimney.

I didn't take any measurements but the results are clear. This is an enormous improvement over the original machine and the Poppery II as well. This was Sweet Maria's Classic Italian espresso blend and I took it to a very dark roast with a speed and consistency I've never seen.

2010-09-13 update: Tried again, this time shooting for a lighter roast. 4.65 ounces for five minutes produced this:

It was just entering second crack. That may be a little faster than is desirable. The roaster could have handled more beans. Adding beans generally speeds things up but I'm not sure that would be true in this case where I'm doing some manual agitation until the beans are light enough to fluidize. I guess the best approach will be to vary the supply voltage.

Naturally Preferred Organic Whole Wheat Rotini one word review: yech

In a few more words it's flavorless, roughly textured, and has no elasticity (and not as a result of overcooking). It may be a step up from the cardboard box it comes in, but only because that little plastic window would get stuck in your throat.

This is a Kroger house brand. I won't buy the stuff again.

homemade ciabatta bruschetta with tomato salad

Leafing through the Sunday paper I saw a recipe for tomato salad on grilled bruschetta. (I think "grilled bruschetta" is redundant, but this was that stellar food journal Parade, after all.) Sounded like an excellent appetizer for a day that was predicted to reach 95 degrees in Seattle. It called for ciabatta bread, and I recalled the one minute ciabatta recipe I'd enjoyed before. But it was already 1:30... could it be done?

I threw it together, experimentally using white whole wheat for one third of the flour, and set the bowl outside to rise. By 5:00 I figured I'd better get moving if this was going to end up on the dinner table. It had risen adequately, it seemed, although if I'd been thinking I would have increased the yeast. I certainly did not want to use the oven, so I fired up the grill and baked it at about 425 for 25+ minutes on a hollow cookie sheet.

The tomato salad was a basic combination of fresh tomatoes, red onion, basil, garlic, red wine vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. Pretty standard, but there is simply no bad way to combine those ingredients. Sadly, only the basil was from the garden. Mid-August and I've had two ripe tomatoes. And don't even get me started on the peppers. This has been a stonkingly unproductive gardening year so far.

Verdict: Not bad. The bread was certainly a bit rushed. It didn't really open up like a ciabatta should, and I'm sure flavor would be better if the yeast had more time to do its thing. The whole wheat probably interfered with the usual texture, too. But once grilled and topped, totally satisfactory for the wall time and level of effort.

potato towers take 2

After the somewhat disappointing yield of the potato boxes last year I was sure I'd done something wrong. A little searching makes it clear that a lot of people have had similar results. (Actually, my results of 29 pounds in one box and 18 in the other seem quite good compared to most, but what I did not get was potatoes above the bottom layer.)

Today I happened across some good stuff at http://mudsongs.org/how-a-potato-tower-might-work/ which refers to http://farming.freecellz.com/archives/46, http://onestraw.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/tech/, and http://www.ciscoe.com/garden/topics/potatoes.html. The right way to do it may be to keep only the top inch of vine uncovered, which is definitely not what I did last year.

According to Ciscoe's instructions I was already behind, with some plants at 12 inches and more, so I did some hasty shoveling. I also tossed in three tablespoons of Osmocote 14-14-14 per bin. I'll continue using soil for the bins, I think.

In this tower I have German butterballs.

And this one has All Blue.

For the potato bed, which had already been fed with bone meal and an organic vegetable fertilizer, I began mounding with rough mulch from some recent shredding. I'll see how that goes in comparison. This isn't an extremely sunny area so yield may be limited for that reason.

The bed has Russian banana fingerlings, Desiree, Yellow Finn, All Blue, and German butterball. These are all late season varieties. The Desiree and Yellow Finn were from last year's harvest. I know there's a chance they won't produce well, but I'm curious to see what happens. They weren't suffering from any diseases as far as I could tell.

gutter planter update

The gutter planter I built and planted back in March is now producing. We had a nice bunch of mesclun and baby bibb lettuce at dinner as a result of the afternoon's thinning efforts.

As I should have anticipated, the squirrels were disruptive and messed up a lot of the early seedlings. Since then I've put up a system for draping bird netting. The aesthetics are annoying but not egregious.

seventh brew (Belgian witbier), part 1

Brewing my first witbier was a lengthy and educational venture. More educational than fun, as a recall. I've wanted to brew another for many months, both because I love the style and because I was so thoroughly tormented by the first. Everything has been in the garage just waiting since last June!

In my witbier tastings I've certainly encountered great variety in the implementation of the style. I don't know that it's my very favorite but Hoegaarden is surely a benchmark and I like it very much. I would be thrilled to come close to the great original, even if it has suffered at the hands of InBev.

After scouting around online I settled on this recipe for a Hoegaarden clone.

So, I finally got things together on 2010-03-27. First order of business on brew day: follow the sage advice of Charlie Papazian. Relax and have a homebrew! One of the few remaining witbiers from last March seemed appropriate. Not bad. The phenolic notes have quieted a little, but are still dominant. Nice body and carbonation. I do like it; it's just not the result I'm after.

The ingredients and recipe for what I guess I'll have to call Clonegaarden ended up like this:

• 2 cans Muntons wheat liquid malt extract, 3.3 pounds (unhopped)
• 4 ounces flaked oats
• 8 ounces flaked wheat
• 8 ounces aromatic malt
• 1 ounce Kent Golding hops pellets, 5.0% AA (60 minutes)
• .5 ounce Saaz plugs, 7.7% AA (15 minutes)
• .5 ounce Saaz plugs, 7.7% AA (5 minutes)
• 1 ounce coriander seed (15 minutes)
• 1 ounce coriander seed (5 minutes)
• 1 ounce bitter orange peel (15 minutes)
• 1 ounce bitter orange peel (5 minutes...but I forgot it)
• White Labs Belgian Wit Ale Yeast (WLP400)

All the ingredients except the coriander came from Brewmasters Warehouse. Good site and good prices. No complaints at all for my first order.

The grains in separate bags went into 1.5 gallons of tap water at 157 degrees. I kept the heat at 3, and the temperature actually climbed to 170 after 30 minutes. Research: what is optimal, and what about thermometer calibration?

This wort ended up surprisingly dark. Gravity at 170 degrees (77 C) was 1.00. Correcting for temperature, that's 1.025. Research: How much of that is fermentable? All three grains need mashing. According to Palmer, temperatures above 158 inhibit starch conversion, so I was running pretty hot. Palmer's typical malt yields table (Table 27) says PPG for steeping these grains is negligible. So what does that gravity mean, exactly, considering that the final gravity was 1.014? Some significant fraction ended up being fermentable, right? Ah, but on other hand this is the boil gravity, so 1.5 gallons of wort at 1.025 becomes only 1.007 at 5.25 gallons. So I guess it's quite possible that none of that is fermentable.

Added a gallon of water, probably splashing a bit too much. The wort was tasty with lots of body. Brought to boil and added Golding hops. 

Based on my earlier research I've pretty well decided to add malt extract near the end of the boil. Added extract at 45 minutes. This knocked the temperature down to 160 and it took maybe 15 minutes to come back to boiling. That's something to think about with respect to the boiling hops. Also added first half of Saaz hops, coriander (coarsely ground), and orange peel in a nylon hop bag. 

At 55 minutes added the rest of the hops and coriander, but forgot the second half of the orange peel. Grr. I wonder whether I shouldn't make a strong tea and add it during fermentation. (I didn't.)

Cooled, aerated heartily, and added 60 degree tap water to get about 5.25 gallons at 75 degrees according to the bucket fermometer. However, the base of the bucket felt much warmer than the top. I was startled to discover just how ineffectual the delivery of water from the faucet is at blending, even from a height of a foot over the bucket. I'd pulled my original gravity sample already from the spigot and realized that it was useless. Mixed by pouring between kettle and bucket, by which time I'd reduced the temperature to about 66 degrees. And, I also discovered that the kettle thermometer may be high by 8 or 10 degrees. Nice. So, the above temperatures for the steeping are probably erroneous.

The upshot of this latest temperature fiasco is that I really need to mark the kettle so I know exactly volume I'm trying to cool, and I need a new floating thermometer.

Pulled another sample to measure an original gravity of about 1.066. The recipe says OG is 1.055 (and is based on 7 pounds of extract). That's a pretty big difference. The 6.6 pounds of LME at 36 PPG would account for 1.045. I'm not sure whether that's the right figure for wheat malt or not; it may well be lower.

Comparing the two samples...wow. The first one was like syrup compared to the second. I'm shocked at how poor the blending is even when adding that much water. I really need to get the water into the bucket first and then pour in the wort.

The yeast was a bit past its "best-by" date of 2009-10-30. Pitched and and plumbed a small diameter blowoff tube.

Just for fun, I poured the gravity samples into a jar with a sprinkle of Red Star dry champagne yeast I had in the fridge.

Fermentation took a couple of days to get going. I put the bucket in the downstairs bathroom and ran the heater, keeping it in the 70s. During my tussles with the last witbier I had my know your yeast epiphany, so I made sure to keep this at a happy temperature. A week later was still blowing bubbles every several seconds, down from a peak of every second or less. The blowoff tube worked beautifully.

The champagne yeast sample seemed to finish up in a few days. Tasty, but none of the Belgian goodness that the wit yeast should deliver.

By 2010-04-12, or two weeks after visible fermentation started, it had pretty much stopped. The gravity was about 1.017, getting pretty close to the recipe's final of 1.014.

There was just a thin layer of krausen. This one never went berserk -- no crap gunking up the blowoff tube, no cranky stopping and starting.

The flavor at this point was dramatically different from the first witbier. There was no harshness, no phenolic band-aid character. It's good! The bittering hops are detectable and it is considerably more hoppy than the first one, although no hop aroma, really. There's some fruitiness and slight tartness. It's lively on the tongue, almost as if it were already lightly carbonated. There's some bitterness on the finish, and I think that's where I pick up the coriander. Maybe a hint of yeastiness. This is a low-flocculation yeast and it is quite cloudy. From my limited experience I'd say it tastes green, expectedly, and with some time I think it may become quite fine. I am pleased.

Bottled on 2010-04-18, at a final gravity of 1.014. Oh, it's very tasty! No question about its Belgian lineage. It has smoothed out a little in the last week. I think I'm going to be happy with this one aside from the color, which certainly is not possible to achieve using the the Muntons wheat LME.

Bottle count was 25 twelves and 21 sixteens.

hop twine mystery solved

This year I wanted to increase the linear travel potential of the hops, so I ran a very clever intersecting zigzag of jute twine between the base of the fence and the cable strung between poles atop it. I was quite pleased. It looked cool bare, and I figured would be quite lovely covered in hop bines. And, it would increase their growth potential by a few feet.

Imagine my annoyance when I discovered a few days later that several of the stout strings were broken. Was it friction? An irritated neighbor? I effected a repair. A few days later, more were broken. Crazed birds? Whipping winds? By the third time I was pretty sure I knew what it was, and today I caught the little rotter in the act.

The hops are growing rapidly, so I'll have to figure something out soon. It's a complete wreck.

Flippin' squirrels. I liked them a lot more before I began gardening, just like I liked raccoons and blue herons before having ponds.

potato garlic white bread

This morning I thought I'd try a bread experiment and hit upon potato and garlic as possible contributors. I love potato bread, and sometimes buy a roasted garlic bread at Costco that is one of my favorites.

Ingredients:

• 1 packet active yeast
• 18 grams Morton's kosher salt
• 2 cups water
• 150 grams baked russet potato with skin, cut into 1/4 inch dice
• 12 grams minced (pressed) garlic (a few cloves)
• 650 grams unbleached bread flour

In the KitchenAid mixing bowl I proofed the yeast in 1/4 cup of the water. Added all other ingredients then mixed on 2 for a couple of minutes. Let rest, covered, for 30 minutes. Kneaded on 2 for 10 minutes. The dough migrated downward into a more spherical form in the last couple of minutes.

It was a fairly wet dough but not too tough to work into shape. Let rise for an hour, punched down, reshaped. It was sticky enough that it suffered some damage as I tore off parchment paper and plastic. Should have let rise on a heavily floured counter, and heavily floured the top before covering.

It proofed for 2.25 hours, and was very pillowy but resilient. I was getting worried about having not let it rise long enough, and proofing too long, so I rushed it into a 500 degree oven onto a stone that had preheated for only 30 minutes. Added .5 cup water for steam and turned down to 450.

I tried a new slash shape and technique, using an X and a shallow cut at 45 degrees. The dough did not deflate, to my relief, so if it was overproofed it wasn't by much. It had good oven spring and the grigne opened pretty nicely.

Baked for 30 minutes and removed at about 195 degrees internal temperature, after which it coasted to 199.

The crust was just slightly reddish, perhaps indicative of overproofing and too much conversion of starches to sugars on the skin. It deflated a bit as it cooled and felt very soft beneath the leathery crust.

As bread, it's great. Superb texture, stretchy and tender, moist, and solid white bread flavor. As far as realizing my vision, it's kind of a miss. The potato flavor is present but subtle. I was hoping for noticeable tidbits of potato, too. And the garlic got lost somewhere along the way. The crust has a slight burnt note that I'd try to lose, perhaps by baking at a lower temperature but on a very hot stone, or proofing for a shorter time.

Next time I'd probably double the amount of potato and at least triple the garlic. The garlic might work better if it were coarsely chopped rather than pressed. Potato should also be a larger dice. Doubling the potato might call for reducing the water slightly. I think it should perhaps have a longer first rise and shorter proofing. Need to do some reading about this.

Bottom line, it's a keeper as a basic idea but needs some tweaking to achieve the desired result.

first try at a ginger beer

Based on this ginger beer how-to I set out to make my first ginger beer. I simplified and modified the recipe a bit, and also doubled it to produce two gallons.

In three quarts of water I boiled for 30 minutes a cup of shredded/pulped ginger, 16 tablespoons of lemon and orange juice, and a cup of white sugar. It should have been two cups, I realized later.

I strained into five quarts of cold water, cooled in an ice bath to 80 degrees, and pitched half a teaspoon of Muntons ale yeast proofed in 3/4 cup of water.

It went into four two liter bottles. Upon sampling I was surprised by its lack of sweetness. That is when I realized that I forgot to double the sugar. I added 1/4 cup of corn sugar to each bottle, but did not taste again or take any gravity readings.

I think the flavor has more lemon than ginger character. It could just be that my ginger sensor is a little blown out right now since I was nibbling on it raw.

It's now resting at room temperature. I think I'll probably test one, two, three, and four days of fermentation.

2010-03-30 update:

All bottles were rock-hard in less than a day. The first bottle went into the refrigerator after 24 hours at room temperature. The second went in after 48.

The first two are pretty comparable. Carbonation is stronger in the second, and it may be just slightly more dry. I think I pick up the slightest hint of yeast and a touch more ginger bite in number two. All of those differences could be the effect of the effervescence, but they result in number two being more successful.

It's really pretty good. I don't detect any of the orange juice. The lemon is strong; I'd actually dial it back a bit and try the lime of the original recipe. It's far, far less sweet than the commercial ginger beer I have had most recently, Reed's Ginger Beer, which is so cloying as to make me queasy.

I don't think the degree of carbonation can actually increase much, so the next two bottles should give me a pretty good read on how the sweetness changes.

I wouldn't say that I can detect any amount of alcohol. A half cup of table sugar and a half cup of corn sugar per gallon gives an original gravity of only about [(3.5 oz 46 ppg + 3.5 oz x 42 ppg) x 1 lb / 16 oz], or 1.019. Even if it attenuated completely it would be less than 2.5% ABV, and I'm sure it will be less in actuality. This stuff should be only 80 - 90 calories per pint -- that's compared to 145 in 12 ounces of Reed's. This is quite a nice light summer drink.

2010-03-31 update:

Added number three to the tasting tonight. Absolutely massive carbonation, demanding several minutes of bottle opening ministrations. It wasn't quite chilled. One effect of this is that it kicks up all of the sediment, which probably affects the result.

That said, I don't actually notice much difference between two and three. Possibly a bit more dry. I'll have to try again tomorrow when both are equally cold. Number one is not entirely flat, but it's close to lifeless. Definitely dominated by the others.

I bought a bottle of Reed's Extra Ginger Brew. Bleah. It's like syrup compared to mine.

2010-04-02 update:

Tasting number four completed the flight. I compared to number two and it is assuredly drier. I measured the gravity of both. With temperature adjustment, number two was 1.014 and number four was 1.011. I don't know that I have a preference. Assuming that my original gravity estimate is correct, that would be about 1% ABV, or nothing to worry about if the boys want some.

I think it's pretty easy to experiment with the recipe in very small amounts. Unlike beer, I don't think that any yeast strain I'm likely to use is going to make much of a difference. Starting with a base of ginger and sugar it should be easy to incrementally add ingredients until reaching something that seems worth upscaling and bottling.

fruit trees in the ground

After weeks of front yard digging, tree removal, Japanese maple relocation, leveling, backfilling, and rock hauling I finally reached the point where I could plant the fruit trees that had been heeled in for three weeks.

Looking out from the front porch they are, left to right, a 4x1 apple (Queen Cox, Belmac, Rubinette, Pristine), a 4x1 Asian pear (Shinseiki, Yinashi, Hamese, Mishirasu), a 4x1 European pear (Orcas, Rescue, Highland, Harrow Delight), and a self-fertile Mount Royal plum. They went in on about the 7th of March.

I got them all as bare root trees from Raintree on a visit to the nursery. They look pretty good but could use some pruning to clean out some inward growth and to get some of the grafts in better balance. Unfortunately they are already budding so I may need to wait for the new growth to reach a few inches. I don't know very much about pruning yet.

I have pulled so many rocks out of the ground while digging holes in Seattle that I could personally reconstruct a glacier's ass. It looks like the Japanese maple is going to survive, at least.

simple crusty beer bread

I saw this recipe for a partial whole wheat modification of this no-knead simple crusty bread from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. I thought I'd touch it up a bit with some beer and vinegar, along the lines of the Cook's Illustrated almost no-knead modification.

Here are the goods:

• 1.5 tablespoons Morton kosher salt
• 1.5 tablespoons active yeast
• 2.5 cups warm water
• .5 cup beer (Cerveza Caguama)
• 2 tablespoons white distilled vinegar
• 340 grams white whole wheat flour
• 635 grams all purpose flour

Stirred the yeast and salt into the liquids in the KitchenAid mixing bowl. Added the flour. Mixed on 1 for about a minute. Left to rise for 2.5 hours, then refrigerated.

Baked a loaf the next day. Let the dough ball rise for a little under an hour, slashed fairly deeply, then baked on a stone at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, with a steam tray.

Wonderful! The oven spring was proportionally greater than I've ever seen. The small loaf remained dense, at nearly 20 ounces, but with a tender crumb and good crust. We had it for dinner while still warm and it was excellent. I would try 35 minutes next time. Should try slashing in a way that lets it open up even more, too. And I'll bet the fraction of whole wheat could be increased.

The presence of beer was more evident than in any bread I've made, contributing a superb yeasty flavor without any of the cloying sweetness that I think I've detected the times I've used Budweiser. The Cerveza Caguama, a light lager from El Salvador, is something I bought for a party where I suspected Corona drinkers to be present. It looks and tastes about the same, although notably skunkier. It is paradoxically tolerable when intolerably cold, but this bread is a much better use for it.

2010-03-19 update: I baked another loaf today and gave it a central slash and about four more curving ones on each side. It worked even better, and looked like an armadillo! I may have to do something with that theme.

one-minute ciabatta bread

How could I possibly pass up a one-minute ciabatta bread hack?

Before leaving for work:

• 1/4 teaspoon active yeast stirred into
• two cups warm water
• 600 grams (about 4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 1 mounded teaspoon Morton kosher salt

Came together with perhaps 15 seconds of hand mixing. Poured into a very large greased bowl and let it rise all day (temperature mostly in the low sixties, probably).

Baked it in the evening for 25 minutes at 425 degrees on a baking stone, sprinkled top and bottom with a Tuscan herb mix. I also used a steam tray. The large greased bowl made pouring this wet dough onto a prepped pizza peel easy, so I achieved a pretty good shape and easily snapped it onto the stone.

Oven spring and crust formation were nice. It ended up nearly semicircular in profile.

It does take more than a minute, but taking all prep and cleanup into account it's probably no more than five, and that's quite excellent for this very palatable result. Really tender but chewy crumb, nice flavor, great with butter.

It probably could have baked for another five minutes. I'll try it with a higher protein flour next time, which I think would make the texture closer to other ciabattas (ciabatti?) I've had. As-is, though, it is quite worthy and would be an admirable sandwich bread.

evergreen huckleberries in the ground

Around the end of February I planted five one-gallon evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) from Raintree. They have quite a few blossoms and a good bit of new growth. Within a day the squirrels were at them so I rigged a temporary cage from bird netting.

According to Raintree:

The best fruiting plant for the shade. A native of the Pacific Northwest. This evergreen bush is beautiful throughout the year. In the spring and the fall the foliage turns from green to a striking bronze color. The late summer ripening berries are a dark blue; tart and flavorful. The fruit is a little smaller than a blueberry. The shrub grows best in the shade where it can reach 6-8 feet without pruning. In the sun it only grows to 3 feet tall. It has a compact, full growth habit and spaced about 3 feet apart makes a beautiful evergreen hedge.

I was thrilled to find something that was both evergreen and fruiting to put along this shady fence.

I did some searching for information on propagation. It's pretty interesting how many sites contain exactly the same text, with no indication of the original source! The upshot is that propagation from cuttings can be sporadic. Growing from seeds works well.

Propagation questions came to mind both because I might like to put more along the fence, and because the squirrel attack resulted in one broken branch, which I immediately stuck into a pot of wet dirt and have been watering. It seems to be doing fine, showing new growth, and a slight tug seems to offer resistance that suggests root formation. We'll see!

References:

• http://cahedb.wsu.edu/nativePlant/scripts/webDisplayPlant.asp?ID=nv051
• http://depts.washington.edu/propplnt/Plants/V_ovatu.htm
• http://www.gardenguides.com/taxonomy/california-huckleberry-vaccinium-ovatum/
• http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/shrub/vacova/all.html
• http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:dnJyV1ug92EJ:plants.usda.gov/plantguide/doc/cs_vaov2.doc+propagate+huckleberry

hops growing vigorously

The Cascade and Centennial hops have been up for at least a month. The Centennials in particular are growing rapidly. I'll need to get the twine strung pretty soon.

The Goldings are just now making an appearance but look very stout.

These are all from the rhizomes I planted last year. They didn't go in until May 9, and didn't sprout until May 17. The difference in vigor is enormous. I think in just a few more weeks they'll be about where they were in June. Perhaps I'll have a real crop this year!