I've been extraordinarily busy lately with work and haven't been doing much around the apartment work at all.  I've been hoping to once again try the tiramisu, however have not had the time to bake. 

I somehow did manage to start up another batch of beer though.  It was composed of  just under 4 pounds of brown rice syrup (3 pounds 15 ounces, since each jar was 1 pound 5 oz)
2 pounds 12 ounces of sorghum extract (two varied sizes of 45hm syrup)
and later on 8 ounces of honey (I put this in at the end so it would decrystalize)
I used 1 ounce of Saaz Hops at 60 minutes and .5 oz at 10 minutes and some irish moss (about 1/8 tsp at 10 minutes)
I overdid the water again since I expected more evaporation during the boil, but I had it completely covered so I wound up with about 6 gallons of liquid.  I added a packet of Saflager W-34/70, the Weihenstephan strain.  There's not much details about it on the saflager site, other than that it's a classic pilsner.  Wyeast (who doesn't do gluten free) says that it's a wheat beer strain which produces a "balance of banana esters and clove phenoics" and that overpitching would lose this banana character (which I wish I did) and that a higher fermentation temperature, hidensity wort or low pitch rate would get more of that banana flavor.  I dislike the banana flavor to be honest and I believe I underpitched. 

I stuck the keg and gallon jug out into the outside shed where it's been slightly below target temperature.  The range is from 9c to 15c, or 48.2F to 59F where the target is really 12c or 53.6f.  The temperature out there normally ranges from 40 to 50 and can go up to 60 on a warm day.  The temperature has been swinging back and forth in my area too, which has not really helped.  We'll see what happens.

Alternately, I've been having more trouble with the chocolate beer from before.  I had left the keg's pressure valve open, which meant no pressure or carbonated beer and I cannot seem to get it to carbonate now.  Hope I figure it out and that I won't have to toss all 5 gallons of it. 

Now that I know that some of my previous beers should have been lagered, I will now attempt a lager.  Or several lagers.  The hardest part will be temperature control because I do not have a good space for it at this moment.  The second hardest part is that I've forgotten the exact recipe I used again.  Back on Sunday, I had decided to make this beer using:
1.4 lbs of Sorghum Syrup 60DE
2 oz(dry weight) Dextrose (Corn Sugar)
7 grams Saaz, Czech pellet hops 60 minutes
4 grams Saaz, Czech pellet hops 15 minutes
Saflager S-23 lager yeast.
1 gallon water

A second, subsequent beer that week uses:
approx 1.4 lbs Brown rice syrup
7g Saaz, Czech (60)
3g Saaz, Czech (15)
S-23
1 gallon of water

These were put into a mini refridgerator the week of the 20th and has been kept around 50 degrees F.   I thought about keeping them outside in a storage area where the water heater and furnace are located but I wasn't sure if I was getting an accurate temperature reading out there. It should be warmer but since I didn't know how warm and if my thermometer was reading correctly so I used the fridge.

Subsequent tests 3 months later showed that both had a fairly crisp taste and was clear, however the sorghum beer edged out over the lighter rice beer due to having more body and "malt" flavor.