Bottling day: Sediments in carboy and adding bottling sugar

I bottled my first batch of home brew this past Saturday, and everything seems to be going well:
-My FG reading was 1.0125
-Color looked very typical of a Pale Ale (Cooper’s)
-No malodorous scents

The carboy was siphoned down to approximately 1 ¼ inch as there was sediment that just leveled itself to the uneven glass shape of the bottom. It wasn’t cloudy at all, just this layer of ‘raw bread dough’ textured sediment. Prior to bottling, I did bring to a boil 16 oz. of water and added ¾ cup corn sugar, letting it continue for 5 minutes. This I added to the bottling bucket as I transferred the beer before bottling. Like I said, the whole process seemed by the book, but I have these two questions for the brew masters:
-Should there have been more sediment in the carboy, and should it have had a cloudy appearance towards the bottom?
-The corn sugar literally evaporated in the water. To me it looked just like water as I added it. Is this typical?

Up next, hopefully my last kit (Coopers Porter) before I begin experimenting with extract brewing sans the kit.

Cheers!
Steve

Sediment levels will vary for every beer (depending on gravities, yeast strain/flocculation, etc.) and different set of procedures (some strain, some do not, dry hopping may cause more sediment, etc.) in my opinion. For a regular old pale ale I'd assume there would be little sediment in the secondary.

As for the priming sugar, that is 100% typical.

Looks to me like you did everything right. Wait 2-3 weeks, pop one open to check your carbonation, and enjoy. If carb'd and conditioned to your liking, pop and enjoy more. If not, allow to condition longer before enjoyment.

Most of my beers are like this when they are clarified in the secondary. Some better than others. I've used WLP002 and the beer finished crystal clear. There was a dense yeast cake at the bottom of the fermenter.
Sounds like you did a great job on your first brew.

WLP002

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Thanks for the words of encouragement. I've joined a local brew club where we have x number of "Brew Days" (where we get together and do Beginners thru Advanced brew clinics and samlpe homebrews), but until I have the chance to goto one, I'm winging it

All in all, I have been pleasantly suprised (and impressed) with the homebrew experience. It reminds me in a way of the chemistry kit I got back in the 5th grade, only this time I know more or less what I am doing with my first experiments.

Also, storage of bottles (both empties and those full of delicious homebrew) were going to be a bit of a problem, but I found the perfect solution. Office Depot carries plastic file folder containers ($10 a pop) that neatly hold 24-28 bottles (put in something on the order of bubble wrap if storing 24). I can line the floor of one side of my closet with 4 of these and have any combination of collecting bottles and storing my most recent brew(s) :rockin: