As I have written before, you can use a heating pad to keep your fermentations warm in the winter.  Well, you can also use a heating pad if you are in the middle of Saison fermentation. 

We have been blessed with hot weather all summer long here in the Northeast.  Of course, things start to cool down right when I need the heat most.

It’s kinda like putting snow tires on your car.  Once you put them on, it doesn’t snow…or something like that.

I have the fermentation bucket sitting on top of the heating pad.  I set the pad on the medium setting at night and the low setting during the day.

The front closet air temperatures are in the high 70s, so I don’t think it takes much to get the wort up above 80°F.

The plan is to take a gravity reading on Wednesday.  If it is below 1.010, then I feel like I can either rack it to a secondary vessel or bottle it straight away.   I think it depends on what I think I can get clean and sanitized by Sunday.

I have been fortunate with my Saison’s fermentation temperature…but let’s start from the beginning. 

I have gotten a whole lot more patient with chilling my wort.  I think I gained this patience as a product of lager brewing.  I knew I had to get my wort down to 48°F before I pitched my yeast, so I let my kettle sit in a snow bank in addition to the immersion chiller with running water through it for about 30 to 45 minutes.  I wanted to make sure there was no doubt that the wort was chilled enough.

I did the same thing with the Saison.  I let it go for about the same amount of time and it got down to 68°F with no jumping the gun.   I moved it to my basement which had an ambient temperature of 75°F.   Over the next 24 hours, the wort warmed up to 70°F and then 72°F.  At that point, I knew I had to move it.

Thankfully, the front closet in my house is a very hot place.  I put a thermometer in there and it has been 78°F to 80°F every morning and evening.  The temp. strip on the bucket has been registering over 80°F since Tuesday.

If we can keep the hot weather going outside, then I won’t need a heating pad inside.

I got my brew on yesterday - early in the morning.  I did a lot of prep beforehand including pre-measuring my malts and sugar, making a yeast starter, and setting up my new mash tun.  It made getting started at 4AM that much easier.

The only real wild card was my propane situation.  I had a couple of tanks with low levels in them.  I didn’t know if I had enough for the water heating for the mash, sparging, and a 90 minute boil.

The first propane tank ran out before I was able to heat water for the mash.  So it was all down to the second propane tank, which was a smaller one - about half the size of a normal tank.

I was able to get a 85 minute boil from the little guy and I think that was close enough.   I had hop additions at 60 minutes and at flameout.   Flameout came a few minutes earlier than usual.

I am very happy to report that the new mash tun works very well.  I think stuck sparges are a thing of the past, for me at least.

Here are some photos from the Saison Brew Day:

The mighty yeast starter (2.5 liters worth).

The new mash tun with false bottom in place.

The little propane tank that didn’t let me down.

The wort boil of the Saison

Unrelated but cool - the Magnum hops are starting to take shape.

On the suggestion of reader JW, I bought a vial of the second version of White Labs’ Belgian Saison yeast strain.  It’s a part of their platinum strain line which means it’s only available during certain months of the year.  Thankfully, August was one of the months.

From the description on their site, this one is a faster fermenter than its version 1.0.  It appears that it can take the heat too, so I plan to get my fermentation temperatures up to 85°F.

I need to figure out how I can slowly raise the temperature from 68°F to 85°F, but I will figure that out.  I think there is probably some investigation of room temperature around my house in my future.

I also have a heating pad ready to help out as well.

Three months down in the Brew Dudes homegrown hops odyssey and we finally have hop flowers.  The 2 main bines sprouted multiple new bines so now I have four lines of twine (total) hung up to support the plant. 

Around mid-July, I started to see little spiny flowers underneath the main bines big leaves about halfway up.  Then, they started to appear on all the other bines, especially the new ones. 

I just let everything grow for a while, constantly training new bines to wrap around new or existing twine.  Last week, I followed a tip of cutting off leaves at the bottom of the bines to ensure more energy was going toward the maturation of the hop flowers into hop cones.  I hope this tip pays off. 

The spines of some of the flowers are starting to brown and curl up.  They are now looking more like cones, so we’ll see.

I read that the maturity of Magnum hops is “late”.  With a good sunny August and a warm September, we may just get something out of this first year plant. 

Photos:

July Hops Update

June Hops Update

May Hops Update

I went to the More Beer site and put in an order for the ingredients that I need for the Saison.  They have a good selection of stuff.  I also picked up a few pieces of hardware, namely the false bottom for my 10 gallon cooler.

The bad part about the site is that they are constantly temporarily out of stock of certain items.  I wasn’t able to buy any Munich malt because it is out of stock - for now.

Selling out of stuff and not having it available for some time is a good business problem to have…as business problems go, but it’s still a problem.  This isn’t the first time I have run into this issue.  I wanted to buy a false bottom from this site a month ago but it was out of stock when I checked.

Now I will probably buy the Munich somewhere else.   Just saying is all.

I did get free shipping out of the whole order, so I have that going for me.

I bought a ten gallon cooler for a mash tun.  I decided that the 5 gallon cooler just wasn’t cutting it with the bazooka screen.

The next step is to buy a false bottom with some tubing and a 3/8 to 1/2 fitting to connect to my ball valve spigot.

Then, I should be on my way to brewing that Saison I have been writing about for weeks.