learn from my mistake

made a little boo-boo I thought I would mention it to save other rookies
made a stout from the recipe database yesterday and this morning it was on the verge of blowing the airlock, krauzen was foaming out of it.
so I rigged up a blowoff tube and went to work.
the bucket the tube ran into was sitting beside the carboy.
this afternoon probably 2 bottles of beer are in the bucket.
don't do this, sit the bucket as high above the carboy as you can so all the beer drains back down the tube into the carboy and only the CO2 escapes
live and learn

on a side note, the recipe was some liquid extract and some specialty grains to be steeped
during steeping I didn't pay attention and the temp got way to high, like 170.
how bad is that going to hurt me? I,m guessing I have less fermentables than I should
I took an OG reading but something was wrong, it was way to low, the extract should have made it higher than it was

Dave

Actually, that's not a good idea. Letting the overflow go back into the fermenter will greatly increase your chances of infection among other things.

For the second issue, since you're steeping the grains and not mashing them you're not getting fermentable sugars out of them, just color and flavor. And, 170* isn't a big deal, you may have extracted some tanins that could lead to minor off flavors but nothing horrible.

Don't worry, your beer will be fine

yikes!! I meant to put this in the beginners section
hmm, maybe I'll go put the bucket back on the floor

Dave