I saw Russell yesterday, he is alive.
I've been getting list email (mostly from Al ;-). I count 20+ for the
month of Sept and 6 (or so) from last week.
----------------------------------------------------
Michael Valentiner, Minneapolis, MN
On Sep 29, 2008, at 10:21 AM, Rick Oftel wrote:
The Barn has been almost dead lately. Maybe it’s
broken?
Yesterday was a good day to store homegrown hops and felt it worthy
to share a storage technique that worked very nicely.
First step was to air dry the hops. I used a large window screen
suspended in my outside shed. The building is very dry and gathers
significant heat when closed. In about 4 days, the fresh hops were
ready for “bailing.”
We have a vacuum sealing machine and it seemed very logical to see
how it worked. I started by making a fairly long bag possibly
2+feet long. I stuffed and stuffed as many hops as I could into the
bag and connected it to the vacuum machine. Using the “jog” button,
I pulled a great vacuum on the hops and made a mini brick. The jog
cycle doesn’t seal the bag so I stuffed in more hops.
My harvest this year was about two 5 gallon buckets of hops. When
dry and compact, I ended up with a flat sack about 2 feet and less
than 2 inches thick.
I’ll be using this process again!
Sincerely,
Rick Oftel
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