Home Grown Hop Pale Ale

7.5 oz of wet Homegrown Centennial hops

My hops plants produced ~7.5 oz of Centennial and 4oz of Cascade, wet, which really isn't much for a beer - when dry that will be 2oz of Centennial and 1 of Cascade, or thereabouts. So, to use them I scaled a recipe to ~2.5 gallons in order for the hops:wort ratio to be such that I can expect a good hoppy aroma and taste (assuming the homegrown hops are tasty and were picked at the right time).

Home Grown Hop Ale
2.5 Gallon Target volume

6# US 2-Row

.5oz Warrior, 15%, 30 min

~4oz Homegrown Cascade, wet, 1min and steep
~7.5oz Homegrown Centennial, we, 1min and stepp

Mash at 151F

US-05

~4 oz homegrown Cascade

Brewed 8/29/15

Brew went OK. The wet hops seemed to absorb a huge volume of wort. Plus, I could not use the re-circulating feature of my cooler, since it would have been clogged with the whole hop cones.

Cooled with ice-bath, stirring the hops the whole time. Got to ~120F, then put in basement to fully cool.

The smell of the beer after adding the hops was definitely hoppy but not quite in the normal way. I am not really sure what to expect here. 

Right after dumping the aroma hops.

Poured the wort into a Big-Mouth Bubbler, and wearing sanitized kitchen gloves, squeezed the liquid out of most of the whole cone hops. Got slightly over 2 gallons into the fermenter, which includes trub.

Will likely only get ~1.75 gallons of wort into the keg. Meep.

Fermented at ambient temp of ~68F, after pitching 1/2 pack of rehydrated US-05 on the morning of 8/30.

8/31/15 - Fermentation is fairly active.

9/8/15 - Kegged with priming sugar for ~2.5 volumes of CO2. Purged headspace.

9/15/15 - Crash cooled.