I wrapped up brewing my strong ale this Saturday that I had to cut short earlier this week. I listened close while I was removing the bung to see what kind of sound it made. I'm pretty sure I heard the sound of air rushing INTO the carboy. This suggests that since I put hot wort into it then it cooled down and created a vacuum. If it had made he sound of air rushing OUT of the carboy there would have been some sort of bacterial or wild yeast at work in there. I'm hopeful that this beer will turn out good in the long run. This is one I'll be aging so if something did go wrong I'll have to wait a few months before I find out unless is obvious at the initial tasting. But from what I've heard strong beers are pretty bad when they first come out of fermentation.
Right now my plan is to bottle some and rack some into a 5L mini keg with some oak chips for a few months. I just need to find out how much oak I need to put in there so it doesn't over power the beer.

Also, since the strong ale was a 90 minute boil and the hop additions were at 90 and 30 mins I had an hour of down time that I decided to use to bottle my California Common. I have to say that was the first beer that I wanted to drink the enitre hyrometer sample from. Really looking forward to this one carbing up and being ready to drink.