Yesterday was bottling day. Woohoo! Oh wait, what a huge pain in the ass this is!  But with a few solid tips from my friend Todd Strauss (the guy's been making beer for 20 years), I skirted a few headaches. First up was to sanitize everything, including the bottles. I found the dishwasher to be a good drying rack: 

Then I siphoned the beer from the carboy to the bottling bucket, which was already filled with dissolved priming sugar to aid in carbonation once bottled. A siphon is kind of amazing. Super simple to use, and it can move 5 gallons of beer in about 3 minutes. Science! 

Next up was filling the bottles. Todd's number one piece of advice was to do this over an open dishwasher to catch various spills. It worked like a charm: 

Then a simple capper:   And I'm done. 24 12-ouncers, and 12 22-ouncers: 

There was only one casualty of the day, I got a little over zealous with the capper and smashed a bottle: 

Nice color. The priming sugar made it too sweet for my tastes right now, but I'm hopeful that will fade while they finish in the bottles. I've heard I should wait anywhere from 10 days to 4 weeks, so I'm not sure how long I have ahead of me before I can take a taste. I figure I'll crack one open on Super Bowl Sunday (11 days from now). Now that's a reason to give a shit about football!