Bottling the beer went off without a hitch – without a single hitch! That never happened before! I usually break the siphon, or spill a whole bunch of beer, or run out of bottle caps … something always goes wrong. Except this time. I shouldn’t feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I am.

Believe it or not, this is five gallons of premium home-brewed Irish stout. Most of those bottles hold 22 ounces of beer, so there’s a lot more stout in this photo than you’d think. Oh, wait, I filled a dozen pint bottles that aren’t in this photo, so okay, I guess the photo doesn’t show five gallons. Oh well.

I’ll be opening the first bottle next Saturday to see how it’s coming along, and the week after that it’ll be ready for mass consumption. Stop by and ask for a pour if you’re in the neighborhood.