The brew went perfectly, I was a little low on my gravity (gonna double-mill from now on), and I got it cooled down to 58° F with my plate chiller and my old IC in a cooler of ice water. Unfortunately, I then learned a costly lesson.
I brew in my garage. The floor is concrete. I know better than to set a glass carboy directly on the concrete, I've heard enough horror stories. So I always set my carboy on top of something. This morning, I set it on a little empty box (maybe 6" tall and 12" square), and began siphoning beer into it.
As I was cleaning my plate chiller, it happened. The box was plenty sturdy enough to support an empty carboy, but as the carboy filled, it sunk into the box and tipped over, exploding all over my garage floor.
I'm so pissed at myself for making such a stupid mistake. $50 in ingredients and supplies (propane, water, cleaner, etc.), and my entire morning, wasted. For the first 10 minutes after it happened, I just sat in shock. I couldn't believe it had actually happened. Then I slowly got to work picking up tiny shards of glass and spraying sticky wort off my garage floor with the hose.
The lesson here: Always make sure your carboy is sitting on a FIRM support that will not give way under the weight of a full carboy.
