Spent grain snack bars

Homebrewing is a really unefficient process. I get 5 kilograms of grains every batch, and living in the city, the only way to get rid of them is to recycle in the organic bin. No chicken, no pigs to feed with it. I saved some grain from the last homebrew and made some kind of snack bars.

Ingredients:
300g spent grains
40g sugar
60ml water
15g butter

Dry the grains in oven, 100°C for a couple of hours (you can do that the evening before, or after sparging).
Make a sugar syrup: add sugar and water and bring to boil, keep it boiling for 5-10 minutes, until it's enough dense.
Then add the butter and let it melt, mixing everything.
Add the dryed grains, mix with a spoon, and put the mix on a baking tray, heat the oven at 100°C for 30 minutes, then let everything cool down for some hours

Now you can cut or break it in small bars.

The recipe is quite easy, you cannot use the whole grain but is a cool and tasty snack, the perfect food to calm down the hunger after drinking too many beers...

Prague

Czech Republic is the homeland of Pilsner Urquell, the land of Saaz hop and where the lager beer born. Since then, there was no great improvement in beer: you can find good (and bad) pilsner at a good price (2-3€ per liter), a dark beer (kind of a schwartzbeer) and nothing more: one of the most innovative beers here is the Staropramen unfiltered lager. I still can't understand why you ferment at low temperature to have a clean taste, and then leave a lot of yeast to make the beer hazy and add yeast flavours and off-flavours.
I visited this pub: http://www.praguebeermuseum.com/ with 30 taps, almost all lagers from Czech Republic, I tasted a Cerna Hora Qvasar that was badly stocked and was stinking, and a 'moravian ale' with Saaz hops higly fermented: well, it's a waste to charge such noble hop with ale esters.
Here is a good brewery, close to Petrinske Sadi park http://www.klasterni-pivovar.cz/. They have good lager (obviously), but also Weizend and a IPA: classic and simple with Amarillo and Cascade, the kind of american IPA I really like.
To have a good and cheap dinner check here http://www.kolkovna.cz/ the Pilsner Urquell restaurants. But the best Urquell I tasted was the tank one at the bar on top of the Riegrovy Sady park, fresher and with more intense hop flavours.
If you walk around Loretanska street, there is a small bistro with no name; hey just talk in czeck but have menu in different languages, so it's perfect for a cheap lunch and a good beer.

Wild hopped beer

Every homebrewer wonder how wild hop can be used, wich flavours will producce in the beer, and how drinkable can be a beer with wild hop.
I found wild hop flowers last september, biking around the countryside. Those flowers had no aroma, but a lot of oils and resins: my hands were sticky after collecting hop, and was a mess to get the bike handle in my hands after.

I forgot the hop in the freezer for months, then I run out of hallertauer while brewing a Bock: I decided to go on with the original recipe with fewer liter, and use 3 liters at the end of the sparge for a separate boiling, with the 150g of this wild hop (not dry, fresh freezed) and at the end I got two liters of wild hopped beer.
I called that beer Martesana, as the name of the artificial waterway that runs in the countryside where I collected the hop: sparge leftovers, wild hop and recicled Bavarian lager. Despite the ingredients, the beer turned out drinkable: no off-flavor, no garlic or onion smells like the wild hops I found in the past. Well, no hop aroma at all, and very low bitter, but OK for a kinda Bock: obviously not the best bock I ever drinked, not even the worst.

So, if you find wild hop and the flowers have no strange arome, they can be used to brew. Anyway, I used 150g for two liter, so you will need one-two kilogram of wild hop for a normal batch. I think it's not worth...

Martesana channel

BCJP certification...

...work in progress

Densimeter correction: Alcohol percentage

Online you find very poor informations about densimeter correction depending on alcohol content in beer, just tons of formulas about apparent vs. real attenuation with Plato and Brix scale, that are almost worthless.
If my saison FG is 997, I know it's very dry, but wich part is the alcohol, and how many residual sugars do I have in the beer?

Better answer would be: start using a rifractometer.
But I did this intead: I measured density at different dilution of cheap Vodka (37,75% Alc.), more specifically 18,87%, 9,43%, 4,72/, 2,36%, 1,18% alcohol. Then I plotted the table here, obtaining the following curve.

Here is the final table, with Alc.%, density, and the points to be added to densimeter

Qui la tabella, con la percentuale di alcool, la relativa densità in acqua, ed i punti che bisognerebbe correggere quando si legge la densità finale dal densimetro. 

Alc %	density	correction
1	998,155	1,84
2	997,11	2,89
3	996,065	3,93
4	995,02	4,98
5	993,975	6,02
6	992,93	7,07
7	991,885	8,12
8	990,84	9,16
9	989,795	10,20
10	988,75	11,25

So, my barley Wine OG 1094 that after 5 days was at a measured density of 1024, is not at 9% Alc., but if I correct according to the table it, is around 8%, and the apparent density of 1024 correspond to 1034: that means 90g/litro of residual sugars. So the fermentation is not finished and it will need some more days to get the real FG...

Bock?

Bock is a medieval style, dark and strong beers with powerful nature, in fact the name Bock means Billygoat. During Easter fast, german monks used to drink Bock as substitution for food. A good Bock needs to have a strong malty taste with caramel notes, full body and a red color. The only problem with that style is that, even if you like it, you cannot drink liters of it without getting drunk soon (unless you're a monk during Lent maybe...).
What is really good in homebrewing, is the possibility to play with malt, mashing temperatures and hops, to brew the beer that fully satisfy your tastes. In that case, who gives a shit if the beer is outside style parameters? For that reason, my last bock was made with Munich malt, 10% of Cara and Crystal to get caramel notes '1% of black malt, for a little hint of roasted taste. Mash was a decoction, and I used Hersbrucher hop up to 30 IBU. OG was 1060 (according to BJCP is too low, and the hop also is too much).

Here is the result: a great red beer, malty and full bodied with caramel notes. It's not too sweet: the bitter and hearty taste from Hersbrucker, and the black malt succeeded in balancing the malts, and thanks to the low OG and the high temperature mash (67°C), alcool is not detectable, and quite low (6%).

It's really a good point to change recipe parameters according to your taste!

Bock?

Le Bock hanno origine nel medioevo, erano birre forti e scure, che durante la quaresima venivano utilizzate dai monaci tedeschi al posto del cibo. Una buona Bock deve avere un gusto pieno e maltato, un buon corpo, note di caramello e un bel colore rosso. L'unico difetto di queste birre è che non possono essere bevute a secchiate senza sbronzarsi velocemente (a meno che non siate monaci in quaresima...).
Il bello  dell'homebrewing è crearsi la ricetta che soddisfa i propri gusti, giocare con le quantità di malto ed il mash per ottenere qualcosa che ci soddisfa. E magari fregarsene se non si rispetta del tutto lo stile. Per questo l'ultima bock che ho prodotto ha una base di monaco, il 10% di malti cara e crystal per esaltare le note di caramello, e l'1% di black, per dare un po' di gusto tostato. Ovviamente faccio un bel mash in decozione, e butto luppolo Hersbrucker in amaro per 30 IBU. OG di 1060 (un pò bassa per il BJCP, e un pò troppo luppolo, ma c'è un perchè).

Ecco il risultato: una bella birra rossa, corposa e maltata. Niente pericolo dolcione: l'amaro terroso del luppolo Hersbrucker, e la piccola aggiunta di malto tostato bilanciano le note dolci e caramellose, e visto che ho tenuto l'OG bassa ed il mash alto (do temperatura), l'alcol non è eccessivo.

A volte conviene aggiustarsi un pochino i parametri secondo i propri gusti!