8 days in the bottles, and I just couldn't wait any longer to crack one open. So today I had the first taste of my first homebrew. The verdict? Pretty awesome. The first sip was kind of amazing. Crisp, bubbly, some bitterness, some fruity sweetness..... Really, quite nice. But as I continued drinking it seemed to be a bit less mature, with a few hints of sourness to the bitter. Honestly I think if I was drinking a bottle of beer from the store I wouldn't have noticed it, but in my own brew I'm paying close attention. I'm told beer keeps evolving and improving, so I'll let the batch sit a while longer before my next taste. I'm pretty happy though... Really fun that my first homebrew tastes good. Now when do I start smoking this stuff?

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! 

I haven't destroyed anything or hurt anyone yet, so I'm off to a good start. Based on advice from one of my home-brew books, I attached a tube to the top of the carboy to help expel very active fermentation byproducts. It's spitting all kinds of frothy belches into a spare growler, so all seems to be good. I'll put in a water lock (I think that's what it is called) after today when things supposedly start to chill out. But there is nothing chill about this right now. Check out this short video of the party in my carboy:

Good times.

So my first day of acting as a brewmaster seemed liked a success, though I suppose I'll have to wait another 3 weeks to find out. The worst part was sanitizing everything: 
Only because all the books scare the crap out of you about keeping everything sanitized. Then they proceed to tell you to relax, while you're freaking out because of what they told you before. Sound advice I suppose. Anyway, the total process took about 2-3 hours to boil the malt and hops, and transfer to the carboy. Here are a few shots of boiling wort:   And this is what hops look like:  They are about the coolest thing ever. They smell like an incredible combination of beer and kind bud. I kind of couldn't stop smelling them... liked 'em so much I even took a bite of one which at first was pretty tasty. But 30 minutes later when that taste was still in my mouth I was wishing I was more sensible. That's a wish I often wish for myself. 

Before I added the yeast to the wort I took a measurement of the Original Gravity. It was 1.072. I don't know what i'll do with that information yet, but I'm told its essential. So there it is. 

Now I pretty much sit tight for a week or two and hopefully beer-type things will start to happen. Think I'm going to crack open a few beers while I wait.