Characteristics of a downflow anaerobic packed bed reactor with raschig ring ceramics as a packing were measured and discussed for the basic evaluation of the process. A synthesized glucose substrate wastewater were used as a feed and process characteristics such as pH, biogas production, composition of produced gas, COD removal and VSS were measured with the hydraulic retention time (HRT) changing from 0.25 to 2 days. As a result, this type of reactor was applicable in continuous operation within the given HRT range and the transient period approaching the steady state was about 20 days. The content of methane in produced gas increase with HRT was always high above 50% enough to use as energy source. The COD removal efficiency increased gradually as HRT increased. The axial profile of VSS concentration in the reactor usually showed the maximum at the lower region and the minimum at the middle. The VSS concentration at the upper region and the exit appeared similarly. However, at 0.25 day of HRT, the VSS concentration of effluent became higher than that of the upper region. Therefore the optimum HRT of this reactor occurred about 0.5 day, at which the production of methane began to be just stabilized and loss of VSS and COD removal were resonable.