Brewing beer again after 10+ years...

I have started to come to the conclusion that I just might be a cheap-ass. The reason? Well, I love deals, sales, and coupons. I ride a motorcycle partly because 50mpg is better than 25mpg any day. I also started to drink some cheap beer to save a buck. While I quite enjoy the occasional PBR, I don't like Coors, Keystone, Bud, Miller, etc. very much. It just frankly gets a little old. As an old Czech Proverb goes "A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure." I was judging fairly well, just not finding anything fine. Then, last week, I went to visit a good friend of mine, Marty. He owns a nice restaurant in Crestwood Kentucky called Bistro 42. We were partaking of some of his fine pasta when he came over to the table, with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in hand.
 
"You still drink beer?" he asked and served me one of the best bottles of beer I'd had in many weeks. I explained that I had been doing what any responsible adult beer drinking male would do in these financially trying times--I had been cutting a few costs, namely by buying the lower end brewed beverages on sale rather than splurging on the good stuff. Note that, being both sane male adults, neither of us spent any brain cells on the atrocious thought--something about forsaking beer altogether. After all, as I explained--we are both fairly sane. So, with the taste of this fine pale ale still upon my palate, subconsiously I had apparently already decided to get the old homebrewing equipment ship shape and buy some malt extract and adjuncts of various sorts. Today was the day I decided to brew. I got everything cleaned and sanitized. I started about 2.5-3 gallons of Louisville filtered Ohio River water heating to a boil in my kettle. After a bit when I could see some steam escaping, I added a can of Munton's IPA Bitter hopped malt extract to the almost-boil.

The brewpot in progress

Shortly, I included 1.5 pounds "sparkling amber" unhopped extract, a half pound of corn sugar, and after all this dissolved, I began to steep an ounce of Sterling leaf hops (7.0 % alpha acid bittering) in a boiling bag. I let this come to a boil, which took a good 30 minutes. I am always notably paranoid at this point. Once you have had to clean up the sticky nightmare associated with a boil-over, you will never want to produce that specific experiment ever again! I let it continue for another 45 minutes or so while getting some cold water (about 3 gallons) into my primary fermenter, stirring carefully between every other quart or so. I poured the batch of wort into my primary. I'm letting it cool below 80 degrees F to pitch my yeast. That should be very soon. After I rack it to the secondary, I plan to dry-hop with some Liberty hops (5.0 % alpha acid bittering).

Unpitched wort.

My specific gravity measured at 38.  I'll let y'all know how it goes.  Oh, and save me your pop-top beer bottles if you will.