Vanilla-Tarragon Bock

Only not really very much so, apart from the vanilla part.

After doing a couple of kits straight-up, I decided to do one beer with modifications but without so much care or attention, just to get a bit of it out of my system before settling down to rigorous experimentation with stout recipes.  I found some vanilla beans fairly cheap at the German grocery, and just racked my "bock" (really just a Brewhouse Munich Dark Lager with half the added water) to secondary onto that and about a cup of strong tarragon "tea" - I don't know how noticeable the tarragon is going to be in the finished product that way, but I couldn't really think of a better method on short notice.  The beer itself has a slightly cider-y, apple-like quality right now, not desirable for the style but actually quite pleasant, and a nice red colour.

It's really cloudy, though.  I wound up using two different yeasts (the dry packet in the kit and an Activator of Bavarian Lager yeast from Wyeast) because it was a last minute decision to use less water, and they're flocculating very strangely.  Bits floating on the surface, lots of it still in suspension, fairly thin yeast cake.  Strangely, though I didn't really pitch enough yeast for the OG, it's actually over-attenuating slightly, down to 1.01 from 1.065 (for reference, that's probably around 7.3% ABV).  I'm going to give it a good few weeks in the secondary, and hopefully it'll clear some.  We have had a cold snap so my closet is actually down to a decent lagering temperature, at least, so it should definitely improve if things don't warm up too much in the next week or so.