First Brew day went well

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ChubbyBrewer

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Made a red ale a few days ago and i keep finding myself going to the fermenter to look at the air lock and try to smell the beer through the airlock. Feel like a little kid the day before Christmas waiting to open my new present.
I plan to let this batch hang out for a few weeks and then go to a secondary while i brew a light ale at my fiances request. I was pondering the idea of taking one gallon of the red ale when i bottle the remaining 4 gallons and add some lime zest and leave it in a 1 gallon glass wine jug. She's a big bud light lime drinker so i thought she may enjoy it. Any thoughts?
 
Chubby,

Congrats on your first brew. Yeah, that little kid on Christmas feeling won't go away. Your plan to fill the pipeline is a good one, it makes the wait easier when you have another homebrew to enjoy. The lime zest is not something that I would do, but the whole point of brewing versus buying is that you can do whatever you want. The only thing I would warn against is that if you remove a gallon for your lime experiment you reduce the amount of beer in the secondary and leave a lot of room open for oxygen and potential contamination. The secondary carboy should be 5 gallons rather than 6.5 which is just enough to hold 5 gallons of beer right up to the neck. If you expect to have a lot of headspace, then I'd just leave your red ale in the primary for an extra week or so, then bottle 4 gallons and condition the fifth gallon separately with the zest. You'll have to do some math conversion with the priming solution, but it's not too complicated.

This is all just my opinion, by the way, so take it for what it's worth.

And long may you brew!
 
the best advice i could possibly give now is this.

go to the liquor store and get yourself some good beer to drink for the next few weeks.

DO NOT MESS WITH THE BEER, and do not open it early.

it isn't a christmas present. opening it early is bad.

and, oh yeah, welcome and congrats on your first brew
 
Brew-Jay said:
Chubby,

Congrats on your first brew. Yeah, that little kid on Christmas feeling won't go away. Your plan to fill the pipeline is a good one, it makes the wait easier when you have another homebrew to enjoy. The lime zest is not something that I would do, but the whole point of brewing versus buying is that you can do whatever you want. The only thing I would warn against is that if you remove a gallon for your lime experiment you reduce the amount of beer in the secondary and leave a lot of room open for oxygen and potential contamination. The secondary carboy should be 5 gallons rather than 6.5 which is just enough to hold 5 gallons of beer right up to the neck. If you expect to have a lot of headspace, then I'd just leave your red ale in the primary for an extra week or so, then bottle 4 gallons and condition the fifth gallon separately with the zest. You'll have to do some math conversion with the priming solution, but it's not too complicated.

This is all just my opinion, by the way, so take it for what it's worth.

And long may you brew!
Click to expand...


i was going to leave the full batch in the secondary and then when i bottle, i will bottle all but the one gallon to try with the lime zest. probably zest from 2 limes.
 
ChubbyBrewer said:
i was going to leave the full batch in the secondary and then when i bottle, i will bottle all but the one gallon to try with the lime zest. probably zest from 2 limes.
Click to expand...

As my three year old would say, that should do it!
 
i've had my first batch in for a little over a week. the anticipation is killing me. i with you. i keep checking it, like all of a sudden alarms gonna go off and the beer will be ready to drink. it's hard to keep from getting under the spigot and drinking away. welcome and congrats on your first brew!
 
I had brewed my first batch a few weeks ago, and i completely can relate. I have a "brew closet" as I call it my other half calls its out store closet :/ no fun lol. But I would frequently check it and smell it and always looking into the fermenter. Cheers when you try it mine was delicious
 
Congrats on your first brew, I would leave this one alone and recommend adding lime to maybe a blond or a wheat beer. I did a lemon wheat and steeped the peal of a whole lemon for 10 after flameout and it turned out awesome! I'm going to make the same recipe but use lime this time. A good recipe for a lime beer is this one https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/lemon-lime-hefe-weizen-255659/ I made this earlier this year and it is awesome! Good luck and welcome to the obsession cheers!
 
Congrats on the first brew!

Also, congrats on jumping right into being a true homebrewer by deciding to go ahead and fiddle with your first batch by adding lime zest to part of it. Definitely a good idea to wait until you bottle the first 4 gallons, before seperating out the 1 gallon for the lime zest addition.

I like the idea of adding lime, but I wouldn't have thought to do it with a red ale. I might do this with a vienna lager whenever I am able to actually do lagering.

:rockin: Brew on!!!
 

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