Weekend Wrap-up part II

After the Great NC Wine Tour, the Marquise and I decided to head on out to the American Brewmaster store in North Raleigh to get some supplies for our first attempt at brewing beer. (Yes, it was an alcohol themed weekend.) The Marquise and I had been thinking about trying out hand at brewing beer off and on for almost a year now. This past December we decided we would give it a real try. I had been looking online for some brew kits. Trying to decide which way we wanted to go, what we wanted to start out with. All that kinda stuff. Well, one day last week I decided to check craigslist, just to see if maybe there was anything there. Lo and behold, there was a home-brew set up that had just been listed! And they were asking 50 bucks for it. I could not resist, it was a good deal. It has 2 plastic buckets with spouts (5 and 6 gal), a glass carboy, a bottle capper and caps and some other odds-n-ends.
So after our great foray into the world of wine we decided to continue the alcohol theme and get started on our beer. We found the store with no problem, even though I thought it was on Glenwood when it was actually on Stoneybrook (BIG difference). If you have never been in a beer brewing supply store, let me tell you it is a wonderful experience. It is worth a trip just for the aroma! We found a beer mix that we thought we'd like (its an Australian beer, of course). Bought some other odds-n-ends and called it a day. The next day, Sunday, I headed over the the Marquise's new place for our first foray. Everything was going great until....... We miscalculated on the volume. The kit makes about 23 liters of beer. Well, that translates into just over 6 gallons. We, naturally were working with the 5 gallon bucket, not the 6. We quickly cleaned and assembled the other bucket and started working with that. Unfortunately, we did not check to see if the spigot was on tight. It was not. It started leaking. We decided to transfer about 5 gallons to the smaller bucket, since we knew that was OK. I didn't want to transfer back and forth, so we left the wort in the smaller bucket. We transferred the remaining to a pot, fixed the 6 gallon bucket and then put it back in there. So we now have BOTH buckets with beer. A full 5 gallon and an almost empty 6 gallon. Both hopefully fermenting away. I don't think the 6 will work because of all the head-space there (to much oxygen). If this works at all, it will be a minor miracle.
According to the Marquise, the buckets seem to be happily fermenting away. We will see what happens. We bottle sometime this weekend or Monday. I'll let you know.......