Rachel!

The first all-grain version of Rachel is here. Brewed her on this beautiful day with very few problems and one looong brew day; extra runoff from the mash gave me about 7.5 gallons to boil down to 5 gallons, which took a bit of time and propane to figure out. But all is well, and Rachel should start fermenting within the next twelve hours.

Hannah is in the secondary. Some of the astringent tannin seems to have dissipated, but only bottling, carbonating, and chilling the finished product will tell the truth. I'm thinking of special ordering some PVPP brewing product (basically microscopic plastic finings that remove haze and tannin proteins) to add if pre-bottling tastings don't show significant improvement.

The approximately 3.5 gallons of Ella that proved to be far too dextrinous for a drinkable beer are back in a sanitized carboy. I'm experimenting with Bean-O and Champagne yeast, a catch-all trick for drying up a beer; in other words, those dextrins (long sugar molecules, cannot be consumed by yeast) will be shortened by the Bean-O enzyme (which is the same enzyme used to break up food in the human stomach; hense, Bean-O digestive aid), which will be readily consumed by the alcohol tolerant and highly attenuative Champagne yeast. The result? Who knows, but I'm expecting an even more astronomical alcohol content and little sweetness to balance it out. All in all, this is more of an experiment than an effort to produce a drinkable product. If worse comes to worse, I'll build a home still (as in distilling) and turn the booze into single-malt Scotch and store it away for awhile. The possibilities...

That's it for now. Eva #2 is next, hopefully in time for the Sam Adam's homebrew compitition.

Sam