Things went fairly well yesterday, all things considered. I made certain to clean every possible item I could think of, and then cleaned others as I went along that I had forgotten about. In fact, I probably ended up cleaning everything twice, but that's better than none at all. I was a bit shy on my finishing volume (as you can see by the picture) so I'm certain that the alcohol content will be a bit higher than expected. How MUCH higher, however, I won't be certain of because at some point while taking my starting gravity I managed to break my hydrometer, and not having a spare on hand, have no idea of the starting gravity.
After getting the beer into the carboy and into the cooler to ferment away at about 50°F, I had everything addressed. Or so I thought. Nothing like waking up at 5am to the realization that I had stuck an airlock on the carboy instead of a blowoff tube. I normally ferment in my 14 gallon conical, so I never really think about it, and I don't often do lagers. I ran downstairs HOPING that the fermentation hadn't yet started (after all, it had only been about 10 hours since I pitched), and luckily it hadn't. I grabbed my blowoff hose, doused it in sanitizer and rigged a bucket of sanitizer for the output side. When I got home today the bucket was full of bubbles and a nice yeast head had started, so I"m knocking wood that I haven't forgotten something else.
