compost surprise

for the last 6 months been picking up the spent brew waste from atwater brewery.  they are located only about a mile from us, and every day we are able to pick up 1400 pounds of spent grain for compost making.  on friday with the delicata sunshine away i had no excuse of why i couldn’t pick up the brew waste.  and i was excited, as i wanted to get out of the office and do something physical.

only problem with this plan was the broken grain mill that greeted me when i arrived at the brewery causing them to abort brewing for the day.  not wanting to go home empty handed i picked up these satchels that had been saved for us.

bags of hops

this is a resent addition – before they were just giving us brew waste – but recognizing how much they are saving on trash cost by having us haul it away, now they are saving hops and coffee grounds for us.

the sunshine had told me that they were saving hops for us, and that they were inside bags of cloth.  as a home brewer i have used cloth bags for hops before myself which are made from the very lowest quality cheese cloth you can get.  this is what i expected, but when i picked up these satchels i was surpised to find them wrapped in very high quality cheese cloth.

we use cheese cloth for all kinds of things around the house – covering sauerkraut and other pickles, making cheese, filtering herb infusions, the list is pretty long and i knew i needed to bring some cheese cloth home as a stinky dirty gift for ma.

hop bag

you can see that the bag is filled with hop pellets that have broken down, but also some of the bags contained coriander and bitter orange – which can see deposited all around the hop bag.  i failed to remember to bring the cheese cloth home over the weekend so they have just been sitting under my desk getting smelly but i still think they will be fine.