Day 14:  I got picked by Adam and we headed to the lab around 10am.  Jake set up the glass distillation system for distilling the experiments on Fusel oils we started at the beginning of the week.  Before we did anything Jake took final samples of the fermentations and ran the Spectrophotometer, Gas Chromatorgraph, and the HPLC tests.  In the first picture on the right Adam is pouring the F1 fermentation into a large 1000ml graduated cylinder to get 400ml to fill the still.  In the next picture Jake is using the Force to start the heating cycle on the still.  The midichlorian count is high with this young scientist.  The next picture is the glass still in full working order under the lab hood.

 While Jake was working on his tests, Adam and I went to work taking some samples from our two fermentations.  They had been running for about 16 hours when we took the samples.  On the left I am loading up the samples into the centrifuge to separate the grains from the wort.  On the right is the top view of the spinning chamber in the centrifuge with my samples in slots 1 and 13.  There go those prime numbers again.  Just below this you can see the results from the HPLC.  Almost dead center you see the peeks of ethanol levels for each strain of yeast.  If you can read it when it is blown up you can see levels of all the important compounds in the sample.  They are given in grams/liter.  We will be taking some more readings over the weekend and doing a final sample on Monday morning before distilling the mash.  Just for fun I added a video of the two fermentations at work bubbling through the air traps.  I'll try and post a few simple videos in future posts now that I realized how to do it.  Have a great weekend.

For this past week I was drinking the Evan Williams single barrel vintage 2002.  So for a 10 year old I found it a bit harsh, but that was in line with things I read by our favorite professional reviewers, one who said this whiskey can have large differences from barrel to barrel.  So I will give this a try again in the future as I found barrel #369 to be about a 7/10.  Definitely good and I would serve it to a friend.  For the upcoming week I am drinking the Bulleit Bourbon.  I have had their rye and liked it so I thought I would give the Bourbon a try.  East Lansing liquor stores don't carry many ryes so I have to spread my tastes.  I would give this 8.5/10  Pretty good, I'll have two tonight.