Brew #1, Cooper's Lager, has been in primary for 10 days. No activity has been noticable for serveral days. I will probably be bottling this on Friday and will be using Cooper's Carbonation Drops.
Brew #2, Doc's Cellar Belgian Ale, has been in primary for 2 days and the activity is very high. The krausen has only become about an inch and a half thick, so no worries about blow-off, but the airlock has been bubbling every second for 24 hours.
After doing some more reading, I've come across a couple details that likely have a significant affect on my resulting ale. First, I squeezed the bag of specialty grains after I was done steeping. Apparently this is a big no-no as it allows tannins and trub proteins to enter the wort, imparting undesired flavors. There are plenty of particles floating around in my carboy, but most of it looks to be normal sediment (minus an ugly black flake that I couldn't clean off the bottom of my kettle before the boil). An article discussing this can be found here. Second, I've learned that steeping temperature is important and proper range varies by grain type. For this ale, I just kept the steeping temperature between 150 and 160 F. I'm noticing many recipes call for a much longer steeping time as well, compared to my instructed 20 minutes. Finally, I've come across several articles regarding so-called "late extract brewing." The idea is that since LME has already undergone a hot-break, it does not need a full boil - it just needs to be brought to a sufficient temperature for sanitizing. Doing a full boil with LME may over-carmelize the sugars. Perhaps this is where my missing 0.011 gravity contribution disappeared...
I had no idea that leaving the LME for the entire boil resulted in over-caramelization. I almost did a partial boil with this last batch. I'll definitely give it a try next time.
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