Sunday was brew day for the next beer, titled Jolly Scott's Jailbreak IPA (long story). Continuously hopped for 90 minutes, with a mixture of warrior, amarillo, and simcoe hops, this one should be a very powerful beer. A 9 pound bucket of extract, along with 2 additional pounds of extra pale extract, plus some steeping grains ensured that this one's going to have a lot of fermentable sugar in it. To prepare for this high gravity beer (1.085 to be exact) I ordered an extra vial of yeast, to double the amount that I pitched, and also a "yeast fuel" pill sold by Austin Homebrew to make sure that fermentation would take off, and not stall.
Monday morning started off as well as I had hoped. I had a blowoff tube affixed to the carboy, emptying into a 4 cup measuring cup, filled with water, to act as an airlock. I knew fermentation was going to be particularly vigorous on this one, so I put the carboy and cup on my counter in the bathroom, and crossed my fingers. At 7 am, only 12 hours after pitching, there were already bubbles coming out of the tube in a fairly constant stream. I was pleased, and it seemed that fermentation was well underway.
Imagine my surprise when I came home from work on Monday, to have this sight greet me...
The beer had foamed everywhere... The measuring cup looked like a giant foamy muffin, and my entire counter was coated with a thin layer of watery beer. The cat had gotten into the spilled beer, and needless to say, I had some additional messes to clean up as a result of that...
I have more hops that I'll be using to dry-hop the beer after it's racked to secondary, so judging with how quickly fermentation has started, I would imagine that Sunday will be the day to do that, a week after brewing.
