Belle Saison and high temperature fermentation

Summer always bring high temperatures, and in my cellar is too warm to have nice and clean fermentations. I'm too lazy to build a fermentation chamber,  so I decited to test Lallemand Belle Saison yeast, to ceck if is possible to ferment in a cellar at 22°C, that means 24-25°C in the fermantation tank. I brewed some beers and fermented them in a tank surrounded by four iced water bottled and wrapped in a blanket to insulate it: direct measures on wort, showed that wort temperature was equal to cellar one. That means the heat from fermentation was balanced by my primitive cooling system.
I tried two Saison style beers, slightly different. In the third one I decided to put 10% roasted malts: I got tired of saisons, and wanted something different.

Saison 1
Malts:
  4000 gr German 2-row Pils, 96%;
  150 gr Brown sugar (dark), 4%;
Hops:
  15 gr Aramis, 7,8 %a.a., 60 min;
  20 gr Styrian Goldings, 5,7 %a.a., 60 min;
  38 gr Styrian Goldings, 5,7 %a.a., 20 min;
  30 gr Saaz, 2,3 %a.a., 5 min;
  30 gr Saaz, 2,3 %a.a., 0 min;
Yeast:
  Belle Saison, 1 pack
IBU: 43; EBC: 14
Fermentation:
Wort at 24-25°C for the first two days, then 22°C (cellar temperature).
OG 1052, FG 998

Saison 2
Malts:
  3000 gr German 2-row Pils, 1,038;
  1000 gr Munich Malt(light), 1,034;
  370 gr Oats, Flaked, 1,037;
Hops:
  20 gr Aramis, 7,8 %a.a., 60 min;
  17 gr Styrian Goldings, 5,7 %a.a., 20 min
Yeast:
  Belle Saison yeast cake
IBU: 26; EBC: 15;
Fermentation:
Wort at, 22°C controlled temperature for te whole fermentation.
OG 1056. FG 1004

Black Saison
Malts:
  1300 gr German 2-row Pils, 1,038;
  1300 gr German Light Munich, 1,037;
  150 gr Chocolate Malt, 1,034;
  150 gr Roasted Barley, 1,029;
Hops:
  20 gr Aramis, 7,8 %a.a., 60 min;
  10 gr Aramis, 7,8 %a.a., 20 min;
Yeast:
  Belle Saison yeast cake, third generation
IBU: 21,9; EBC: 64
Fermentation:
Wort at, 22°C controlled temperature for te whole fermentation
OG 1042. FG 1008

Main difference between the two Saison is due to the Munich malt: Saison 2 is darker, with higher body, also thanks to the flaked oats and the lack of sugar, while Saison 1 has an apparent FG of 0.998! If you give simple sugars to Belle, it's a piranha, but don't worry: it won't eat your fermentor nor complex sugars from special grists (mash were identical for the three batches).
Saison 1 has lots of phenols in aroma, and heavy fruity notes covering all hops aromas. Phenols are noticeable also at taste with unpleasant bitterness and high cytric notes .
Better the Saison 2, with esters more evident in aroma, wit notes of pear, grapevine uva and medium phenol (but again a bit unpleasant): lower temperature brings lower off-flavors. In this beer there are noticeable malty notes, from Munich. As always with this yeast, all fermentation notes are evident in the nose, but lighter in the flavour. Malt with a bit of melanoidins is evident but fruity esters are medium-low, distant from classic saison, while the spicy phenols and a citric note are more evident.
Those two beers are not comparable with Black Saison: here roasted malts covered all fermentation aromas, just a hint of ester to the nose: roasted malts worked as concrete to cover in black phenols and off flavors. The only disturbing detail is the citric saison-like acidity that is not suited at all with roasty notese (to have an idea, try to squeeze a slice of lemon in a pint of Guinness if you dare).

In the end, to use Belle Saison at best, better to keep temperatures around 20°C and raise after 4-5 days when strong fermentation is over.
In other words, I need a fermentation chamber.

My worst homebrewing mistakes

Here the seven worst errors made during my homebrewing years. Small distractions and huge mistakes.

7) Wrong Preboil OG
After sparging, I went to take a sample from the boiling pot to measure preboil OG. After cooling I read it with a densimeter: 1,026. What?!? Mash and sparge went well, iodium was OK, same procedure as ever..well, maybe malt was too old and lost some conversion power. Well, I didn't want a 1,030 OG beer, so I added sugar, did a 90 minutes boil to add some OG points and added a bunch of american hops to make a zesty session beer to drink during summer. After cooling the worth, I measured again the density: 1052.
I made a huge mistake taking the sample for the preboil OG measure: I took it from the upper part of the worth, without stirring, so I measured the lowest density worth coming from the end of the sparge.

6) Diamalt (bakery malt extract)
At dawn of homebrewing in Italy, many websites (and many homebrewer) used to brew with baking malt extract: cheaper than extract malt and similar, everybody tought it was the same thing. Including me. I got this Diamalt extract from a bakery and brewed an English Ale. The beer was something acid but sweet, with vanishing fizzy head, no hop aroma.

5) Wrong priming procedure
It was my second brew from kit, and I wanted to improve bottling and priming: not sugar in the bottle anymore, but mixing all sugar with the beer. So I measured sugar, made a syrup and added it in the primary fermentor. Without moving the beer in a secondary tank. I stirred very gently, to avoid to move the yeast cake and the bottled. Obviously, bottles had a huge sediment and beer was undrinkable...

4) Burning Mash
I mash in a 25 liter pot, on the fire to set temperature: here you must be careful to not overheat the whole mash. I just tried once an Imperial Stout, that was when I forgon the fire on after 30 minutes mashing. It reached 75°C, enough to denature enzymes and block conversion reaction. I went on anyway, mashing at alpha amylase temperature, but I had a very low efficiency and a 1050 OG after boiling. Anyway, the stout I produced was quite OK.

3) Open spigot
The fermenting tank was sanitized and ready to be filled with worth, after six hours process. I started the transfer from the pot and I realized the tank spigot was open, and the worth pissing out on the floor. I tried to close the spigot, but it was wet and slippery, so I drop the tube spilling worth, closed the spigot, trow on myself some worth, cleaned the couple of liters that went on the floor and started back the transfer from the pot. I was pissed off and tired, so I just sucked the tube to make empty and start the tube transfer. It works, you don't get any problem or infection if you do it correctly. No need for pumps or other strange method to prime the tube.

2) Dirty hop bag
Once I brewed an heater beer: To give it aroma, I added some heater flowers at the end of the boiling. The problem is that I added those flowers at flameout without sanitizing the hopbag (heater has tiny and light flowers; I didn't want them floating on the top of the worth). This hopbag spent few months in a drawer, colletting all the bacteria that were in my kitchen (not really clean...). I got an acid infection, and after a couple of months, when I tasted my Heater Ale I found out a nice sour beer.

1) Missed FG and explosions in the cellar
I was a noob at my third brew by kit: I bottled at 1,020 density, as the FG concept was not clear to me and I did't consider effect of overcarbonation. It was summer, and one morning explosion came from the cellar. I was lucky nobody was around, I just had to clean the mess of beer and glass and did,t get hurt.
THIS IS THE MOST DANGEROUS MISTAKE EVERY HOMEBREWER CAN DO, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER BOTTLE IF YOU DIDN'T REACH FG, AND DENSITY ISN'T STABLE FOR A FEW DAYS.

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...