Honey Kolsch Progress Report

Earlier this month I wrote about the honey kolsch that I brewed one Saturday.  I had been very worried about it - the yeast took a few days to activate and I thought I might have had some bad microbes.  But lo, eventually they woke up.

Here's an update from Saturday, where they'd been going strong for two days.  Look at that flocculation.

I just checked on things and there is still a steady burp, so I will let it stay in primary for a few more days.

Meanwhile, I'm planning to do something extra with this batch - I want to add a little bit of lavender to the beer when it is finished.  I could add the flowers to the secondary, but I'd like to have a better way, since that would clog my siphon.

This process of extracting the essence of an herb is
called making a tincture.  I was concerned about putting
the dried flowers into my brew, so decided to use vodka
to extract the flavor, and I'll add it at bottling time.

I've read about tinctures...Wikipedia says, "Herbs are put in a container and and a spirit of 40% or more ethanol is added, or 80 proof vodka..."  So I took a couple of shot glasses worth of lavender flowers and three shots of Absolut to make this one.  I'll add it at the bottling stage when I mix in the priming sugar.

So what we'll have is a special spring kolsch with honey and lavender...hoping for good results here.