A new Chicago home brewer

Evening everyone.

I'm 5 days into my first batch, and I can't tell you how helpful this site has already been. Being patient about my primary fermentation has alleviated my stress of "oh god, what if I don't get it out soon enough!" And a hundred other concerns.

I am now chill and will be making a nice easy English Brown Ale.

Welcome! Southsider here! What did ya start with? Extract, Partial mash, All-Grain?

welcome........ive had a lot of help myself-sanatize, pitch enough yeast, sanatize and watch your temps.....cant beat it.......until you get the fever

It's from a kit so it's extract, both liquid and powder malts. The hardest part has been keeping the temp. Chicago is hot as balls right now. But I luckily have a 2 story walkdown so the bottom level is mostly underground. That keeps me around 68-70. It was around 72 for the first few day, nothing I could do about it though. We'll see how it works.

I am going to Nascar in Bristol August 24th and wanted to ship some of the batch. So I'm keeping it in the primary for 17 days, batching to my secondary bottling drum. I'll bottle and let it sit for 12 days, then ship it down to TN. It's a little rushed. I'd rather leave it in primary for the full 3 weeks and bottled for 2 plus, but oh well.

I won't be sending it all down so I'll have lots sitting in a dark corner to keep aging for another couple of weeks. I look forward to seeing the difference in taste over the different weeks.