leaving Town, First Batch question

Brewed my first batch this afternoon. I have a question for all the experts. Since I brewed my first batch today (Thursday). I need to leave and go out of town next Saturday for 7 days. Can I rack to a secondary once fermentation has stopped) lets say next Thursday or Friday. Since I will be out of town for a week will it be ok till I get back on Feb 4 to bottle? Or is that bad to leave in fermentation mode for so long. The receipt only calls for 4-7 days in primary and says you may rack to secondary. After reading on this site (great by the way, very helpful members, thank you) it seems like it should not be a big deal, correct?????. My starting G today was 1.040 where it should be, and says in the next 3-7 days final G should be around 1.007. What if it reaches 1.007 by next Friday, should I just go ahead and bottle? Or can should I rack to make it better. Thank you in advance for the help.

You should be able to rack to secondary in three to four days when the airlock activity slows to about a bubble per minute. After it's racked you can leave it for a while 4-6 weeks I'm told with no trouble. Don't rush the secondary, let it get nice and clear.

With that low of a starting OG you should be ready to rack to secondary before next Saturday, but even if it's not it wouldn't be a problem to leave it in the primary for another week if necessary. The one thing I personally wouldn't do is bottle it after only one week, even if the SG has reached your target.

Thank you for the help. I think i will take a reading next week and then rack to secondary. Thank you so much for the help. I can't wait to try it out.

I agree with El P. on the not bottling to soon. I learned the hard way. I got in a hurry about two months ago and bottled a porter that hadn't finished doing it's thing. I opened one four weeks later and poured it into a tall glass. Everything seemed fine for about 5 seconds.....then I experienced a trauma. The entire glass full turned to foam poured over the rim. After it settled there was only about 1" left in the bottom and that had turned flat. It was pretty tragic.

I let the bottles sit another 4 weeks and decided I better check one to see if they were near "bomb" stage yet. First cap I popped was like letting the air out of a tire. Huge amount of cO2 pressure. In less than one second I had a 15" high beer geyser. The whole bottle shot out as foam. Only about 1/2" liquid remained in the bottle. I went ahead and opened the rest of the batch and sent it on down the kitchen sink drain. Other than my two little boys getting some serious entertainment from the "volcanoes" the whole batch was wasted.

Lesson learned....Patience DOES matter in brewing.