It was beyond time to brew again. My phenomenal Dogfishead 90 clone was almost all gone and I was restless. I dug up an old recipe on The Abbey for a Samaranth clone that we never brewed. I took it to the wonderful people at HopTech and they helped me out.
My cousin Matt came over for the brew day and lent a helping hand. He's fresh out of the Navy and eager to brew.
The carboy disaster occurred during the cooling. Let me first just say that I realize you are not supposed to cool hot glass too rapidly nor are you supposed to warm cool glass too rapidly. I realize that, but I did it anyway. I have done it before with my carboy, and never had a problem. Well, I guess it was finally too much.
We had placed the carboy full of hot wort into an ice water bath in a big rubbermaid. About a third of the way filling the bath, I noticed that my carboy was looking more and more empty- never good. I grabbed the neck and lifted half of my broken carboy out of the soup. I almost cried. But I quickly recovered. I would not go down without a fight.
I picked four large sections of my broken carboy out of the watery wort. They were clean breaks- no fragments or shards. I poured the entire rubbermaid back into my boil pot (which was more than the pot could handle now that there was so much more liquid). I then boiled the crap out of that thing (I picked out a few leaves and such first). I must have boiled for five hours in order to evaporate out all that extra water until I got back to the five gallon batch that I started with in the carboy. I also wanted to make sure I killed anything that may have tried to feast on my sugary concoction whilst it was stewing in the rubbermaid.
In the meantime, I went to my friend's birthday party, borrowed a brew bucket, had several beers, and went back home to my mess.
Now, my "beer" is bubbling away. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I'm hopeful. And if it ends up being delicious, I will feel like the baddest of all asses.
Pour one for me.
