full carboy blues

Autie Ester's Gulden Chaach Keg Conditioned Father's Day Belgian Ale is now in the fermenter, as the harvested Gulden Draak yeast begin again with their lifecycle, chowing down on the O2 and trub i slurped into the carboy.

speaking of carboys, i'm now the proud owner of two 6.5gal carboys. i was planning to rack the Emperor Norton's 4.0 Belgian Imperialist into my 5gal carboy, making room in the 6.5 for the Auntie Ester, but the gorram Imperialist was still bubbling! I didn't want to disturb it, and even though we seriously don't have room for another carboy, i had little choice.

we're rather getting to know Phil down at Fermentation Frenzy^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmorebeer, and we may almost be to the point where he knows my real name and not just my email address.

for posterity, here is the mashbill:
1lb wheat malt (for head retention and body)
.5lb caravienne (for flavor, body)
.25lb special b (for flavor, body, color)
7.5lb belgian pale ale malt (for happy yeast)

and the rest:
1oz mittelfruh (60) (nearly freaked when i saw that he'd given me mittelwtf instead of the hallertau i'd asked for, but i caught myself, hypothesized, and confirmed that mitwtf is a varietal of hallertau)
.5oz saaz (5)
1/2oz coriander (5)
1/8oz cardamon (5)

and, of course, the harvested GD yeast.

things went well with only a few hiccups :
1 - lots of disturbing of the grainbed during sparge. my current sparger is just a wort aerator stuck on the end of a hose. it isn't meant to operate at low flow and so it makes big drops that disturb things.
2 - ran out of sparge water. 5 gallons wasn't enough. i really need to plan on sending N gallons of sparge water through, where N = the amount of wort i want to boil.
3 - still have a spigot leak in the brewpot. nothing major.
4 - boilovers! d'oh! got two or three of them when i put the lid on at the end. i have trouble turning down the heat enough that the boil isn't humungous and the gas doesn't go out.
5 - forgot to put the washers in the connectors of the wort chiller, and spilled a little wort
6 - didn't have the sink at full blast and took too long to cool some of the wort

still, i got the wort to 68F in about 20 minutes as it xferred to the carboy, and in fact, i was worried that it might get a little too cold for Auntie, so I slowed the sink again to keep the temp high. I reckon I pitched at about 75-80F. i dont have a fermwrap hookup for the second carboy. well, i have an unused fermwrap, i just dont have a temp probe -- it's still in the Imperialist! In any case, i think it's fucking hot enough around here lately that i dont need a heater on the Belgian.

The yeast smelled interesting as I pitched it. Not entirely great, either. This beer is a big bunch of experiments all in one.
1 - my first all-grain recipe that i done did made myself. nothing to it. i got a book tho for next time so i can be all edjumacated about my recipes. tragically, the book really doesn't have a lot on belgian beers which, let's be honest shall we, is where my brewer's heart wants to be.
2 - my first experiment with harvested yeast.
3 - i plan to keg-condition the beer after a couple of weeks in the primary. haven't done that before.
4 - first beer with spices
5 - first beer with so few hops (it *is* belgian, afters all)

and i'm sure there are a buncha other firsts in there some place. first time i used my wort chiller properly. that thing rocks. i'll use it even more properly next time and cool my beer in 10 minutes.

anyhow, this should be a very interesting beer, if not a good beer. i can't wait to see how it turns out.