Bottles away!

Today I bottled the first brew. Everything went as planned and anticipated.
Of course, the real assessment of that will be in a few weeks when I can open a bottle and see how it did.

The beer spent 11 days in the primary, and 22 in the secondary. Technically it should go 33 days in the bottle conditioning process. Even though I can be patient, I doubt I can wait that long.

Just under 5 gallons came out of the secondary.
I snuck a few glasses to drink over the past couple of weeks. The last one was just a couple of days ago. I had the glass sitting on the counter while I tended to a couple of other things, and the wife happened by and thought that it was a commercial ale! WOW!

The time in the secondary really let it clear up. I even put a little bit in the fridge a couple days ago; which is really too cold for an English Bitter, and it only had a little bit of chill haze.

I bottled 27 500ml and 13 12 oz. bottles.

OG was 1.044, TG was 1.011. That should give roughly a 4.3-4.4 ABV.

When I started out on this venture I couldn't imagine how to consume 5 gallons of beer before it went bad. I've even been doing some research this past week on how to brew smaller batches.
Now, today, after putting my creation in it's final march, I can't see how it's going to last long enough for the second batch to be ready! LOL

I still plan to do some smaller batches. I just have to finish solving a couple of issues; mainly how to find an adequate ~2 gallon vessel for the primary.