First Time Brewer

So I finally got to brew for the first time on Saturday. It went pretty well. It was a lot of fun, and I read enough from here and in John Palmer's How To Brew that I felt confident the whole time. Only part that was troublesome was chilling the wort, and I probably just need more practice and planning for that part (like freezing up a whole lot more ice for next time).

Oh, and I forgot to take my OG reading until after aerating the wort, and my thermometer crapped out because the cable got wet so I really don't know how warm it was when I did take it. I kind of made some assumptions and corrected the reading to 1.058.

The fermentation started off pretty quickly, with the airlock bubbling regularly after 3 hours and everything really churning around after 9. It's slowed down since; this morning there wasn't really any churning and the airlock was down to once every 8-10 seconds. Is that normal? Did I perhaps not aerate enough? I heard that without enough oxygen, the yeasts will work faster but not as efficiently.

Here's my blog post covering everything.

Looks good, nice blog and pics. You'll have some tasty beer. Looks like you used the dry Windor yeast. Everytime I've used it ther fermentation was pretty fast. Just because the airlock is slowing down doesn't mean it's doing its thang. Let it sit in the primary for awhile (say 3 weeks) and take a hydrometer reading.

Welcome to the club!

I was planning on taking a reading after 1 week, then probably two weeks. I'm hoping that I'll be able to bottle it around the two week mark so it'll be conditioned in time for New Years parties, or even Xmas if possible.

Assuming 4 weeks bottle conditioning time, that's 2 weeks in the primary and ready for New Years.

Looks good. I like the blog. I'd recommend taking a look at late extract brewing (search the forum, tons of posts). I done this my last two batches and I can tell a significant difference in the taste. My brews are going from good to great using this technique.

From what I've seen in those other threads, it looks like I should have added some of my extract at the beginning to get better hop utilization... But the recipe that came with it said to add the hops and extract at the same time, so I don't know that I would want that much hop utilization... But I had the steeped grain water, which would have improved hop utilization, although I don't know how much...

And on top of all that, the stove is crappy and old and was not able to keep a rolling boil so much as a steady bubbling. Hopefully my beer won't be cloudier than a... a... really cloudy day? That didn't work quite as well as I was hoping

You are right, a bit of the extract at the begining of the boil is good. A pound is enough I've found. Adding the remaining extract late (45 minute mark) reduces the chance that you will carmelize the extract giving you that "twangy" taste many speak of when doing extract kits. Also, this method reduces the chance that your finished color will not be darker than expected.