Last updated on February 28, 2012
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After some fun bike riding I got to brewing another batch of beer; a slight variant on a blonde ale referred to by Cap N Cork as Vegas Gold. This was to have 2 oz of Sterling Leaf Hops in it (these are from LD Carlson), but while measuring them out into two mugs there was a bang of something hard falling into one of the containers.
Reaching into the hops I found this rock, which per my kitchen scale has a mass of ~10g. I thought that one of this bag of hops seemed a bit small, but I figured it was just a little more compact than usual. Since it constituted a bit more than one third of a bag the finishing and aroma additions were a bit short, but I’m sure the beer will be fine. And now I have a hop-encrusted rock!
(Thankfully this was in the bag that I’d been measuring out and not the one that got dumped right into the kettle. While I don’t think the rock is particularly dirty I’m glad it didn’t get boiled in case something odd might have come off or out of it.)
UPDATE: I’d emailed this post to LD Carlson, and a very friendly person there contacted me and ended up sending me some replacement hops which I used in my next batch of beer. Interestingly, they no longer stocked Sterling Leaf Hops, so the ones that I purchased must have been pretty old. Hopefully it won’t mess with the flavor of the beer. Maybe I should stick to pelletized stuff for now on…