My Lucky Tummy

Last weekend, Griffin Hill took a field trip to My Lucky Tummy, a pop-up food court with chefs from the refugee and new American community in Syracuse. My Lucky Tummy is one of our favorite things going on in Syracuse. Last May, Saul and I attended the very first My Lucky Tummy event which happened to occur our very first week living in Syracuse. It made us feel really good about our decision to move here. Great food, great community. Delicious ideas being put into action.

My Lucky Tummy at the Alibrandi Center. "Beer embraces the flavors of the world like no other." 

Fast forward nine months, and we are collaborating with My Lucky Tummy on beer to complement the dishes being served. In the future, once we are licensed, we will brew all the beer for My Lucky Tummy. Until then, we will select regional beers that go well with the food. This time we picked Victory's Prima Pils, Ithaca's Flower Power, and Ommegang's Hennepin. All beers we adore. All beers that pair beautifully with the rich and spicy winter dishes at My Lucky Tummy.

In addition to selecting and slinging beer, we served tastes of two of our own beers, both brewed with 100% Griffin Hill hops. The first was a Chinook Ale, brimming with ruby red grapefruit aroma. The second was an Oatmeal Porter, a silky malty brew balanced by our Newport and Cascade hops. After putting so much time and energy into growing and brewing, it was really rewarding to complete the cycle and serve our beer to actual thirsty people. The fact that our beer and project were met with such enthusiasm was really exciting!  

The next My Lucky Tummy is in early May. We are already anticipating what new flavors will appear and what styles of beer will play nicely with them. 

New beer, new hop yard

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As I write, Saul is cleaning up from an exciting brew day. An all-Cascade pale ale. Whose Cascade? Why, our Cascade! If the wort is any indication, and of course it is, this beer brewed with extremely local ingredients will be very tasty indeed. Our Cascade, Marty's pale malt, and Valley Malt's red fife wheat. Also, a little bit of biscuit malt from Belgium. The other exciting aspect to this beer is the yeast we're using. East Coast Yeast's Old Newark Ale. It's a historic yeast strain from the original Ballantine Brewery in Newark. Thinking more about this beer, it's kind of an amazing merging of brewing past, present, and future in this neck of the woods. I can't wait to taste it again after the yeast does its magic. 

This beer is one of many single-hop brews we'll do this season to discover the individual characteristics of the hop varieties we so painstakingly and lovingly grew this year. This is our major work this winter. Brewing, identifying, and playing with the characteristics of our hops. Using this information to plan how much of what varieties will end up in our permanent yard next spring. Developing recipes in which our hops shine. Sharing these test batches with others and getting their feedback. This winter will be fun.    

This fall, on the other hand, has been a little frustrating. Post-harvest, our big task was to get our first half-acre hop yard constructed. We harvested posts from our locust grove last winter, so we were starting strong. The work to be done this fall?  Finish cutting the posts to size (22 ft), moving the posts and stripping the bark off the bottom 4 ft, laying out the hop yard, making 44 four-foot holes, getting the posts in the ground, tamping them in, putting up the wire work. We've made steady progress, which you can see in the pics below, but we're a little off our ideal timeline, due mostly to.... our inability to control the weather. 

The biggest set back came with the huge amount of rain that fell right after our auger-owning farmer friend helped us dig the holes. Let's just say, erosion happened, we lost some amphibian friends, and Saul had to re-dig, by hand, the 44 holes, twice. We persevered, though, and the posts are in. Just not yet really...up. Hours of tamping await. But we are well on our way and enchanted by the new landscape of our property.