Eva

Just wrapped up brewing Eva on a short and early brew day. Forgetting to take a hydrometer reading, I'm not sure how my efficiency fared this time, but everything seemed to run its course smoothly with no big mistakes, messes, or boilovers. I would have liked to brew her before the Canada trip, but finances and lack of propane got in the way, so I'm crossing my fingers that 2-week-old crushed grain will have minimal effect on the finished product. Of course, we're moving from this apartment in 10 days from today, so hopefully Eva will grind out a solid, short fermentation and be ready for secondary (or even bottling) by the 19th or so. She was, if you remember, a leftover "kitchen sink" kind of beer last time around, and I didn't exactly take too much time or care in her fermentation. Essentially, Eva is a perfect quick beer, not too high in alcohol that it requires significant aging, if at all, and enough roasty toasty specialty malt to cover up any yeasty flavors that come hand in hand with young, immature beer. Of course it tended to improve over time, and I'll evaluate this upon carbonation with the last bottle of last batch's Eva (now about 4-5 months old) which has been hanging out in my mini-fridge for a good while.

In other news, www.dierksenkougan.com will be developed soon and be the HQ for starting to organize the brewing fiasco that will be my sister's wedding. It should be a nice, clean, semi-professional site that may just be rather important in a decade or so.

Rachel and Hannah are mere days away from being ready to sample, and supplies of the Tripel and the IPA (which I plan to brew again soon with other single varieties of hops like Simcoe or even a full Tettnanger IPA which I've never before seen) are still above the case mark. I'm being careful not to drink up any one batch at a time so as to have plenty of good offerings to share when requested. I'd also like to always have some of each of the six regular beers available at any given time, making Annabelle, appropriately, my next endeavor, and likely the first beer to be brewed at the new apartment on California Ave. Party Sept. 3rd, by the way.