First beer - mild success

Beer turns out to be the perfect Christmas gift. After a few weeks of moderate work, my first beer, Midwest Supplies' Autumn Amber kit, turned out to be a fairly popular success. This beer was a pretty middle of the road amber ale:

6 lbs. of Gold LME
2 oz. Special B
8 oz. Crystal 80L
2 oz. Roasted Barley
1 oz. Hallertau @ 60 min
1 oz. Fuggles @ 1 min
Mutton's dry yeast

After 6 days in the primary and 10 days in the secondary, both at 68 degrees room temp, I bottled with priming sugar and put up. At day 7, I pulled a few bottles to put in the fridge. They definitely tasted young, not that I am sure what that means, and a bit watery. I wrote this off to the fact that I had such a small boil volume (2.5 gallons), and that I had to water that whole thing down. This may have been an incorrect assumption as after two weeks the beers have started to mature nicely. Totally different profile than at week one. Not as much water or fruity character, and much nuttier. I am serving a case of this at my NYE party, so by then it should be even better.

I gave this beer as gift to friends and family, and reactions have been fairly positive. Most of the crowd were occasional beer drinkers, more used to commercial brews. Their reactions were overall pretty good. Most liked that it was dry and not to sweet, although this is almost the opposite of my initial reaction (IPA fan). Also, they seemed to like the "complexity of this". What I was most pleased with was that lined up beside old standby Pilsner Urquell in the fridge, my beers seemed to be getting consumed at a 2:1 rate. Not bad for a first try.