First Brew

[Woodland]

Hi Folks,

I just brewed my first Brewers Best Red Ale last week. I've already found some helpful tips on this forum, I look forward to taking part.

I've tried to do my homework and practice good sanitation, so I'm guessing things should come out fine for a first homebrew, things seem to be progressing normally thus so far.

In short, I brewed the wort 7 days ago and transferred to a 6.5 gal glass carboy. Had trouble reading the hydrometer scale, but OG was around 1.04. I pitched the White Labs Irish Ale yeast and let it go. Fermentation took off and then died down after 3 days. Shortly thereafter the Krausen dropped back into the beer. Bubbling seems to have stopped completely after 4 days. I know people can be fiercely divided on whether to rack to a secondary or not, but I have a glass 5 gal carboy so I racked to a secondary on the 5th day as recommended by the kit instructions. There was/is a good amount of yeast sediment on the bottom of the primary and secondary fermentation carboys, but the beer is still quite cloudy, as I guess is normal for something that was just racked and only a week old. I'll give things another week or two and see how it looks. I'm trying to leave it alone as far testing the gravity and peeking at it too often. I have it in a dark closet next to the crawlspace where it's around 64 degrees. I'll check the gravity again when I'm ready to bottle.

Next ale I'll try and do just a long primary and see how I like the results versus secondary.

 

[FastAndy]

Congrats it sound like you are on the right track. Most that should fallout in secondary. It sounds like you've got the patience part homebrewing down and thats usually the hardest part.

Welcome to the forum.

Cheers

 

[Gridlocked]

Welcome Woodland!!!

 

[ecd13]

Welcome Woodland. On Wednesday, I cracked my first bottles of BB Red Ale, all I can say is it was awesome. I never went to a secondary, left it in the primary for 3 weeks then bottles for another three. Bottle my second batch, Caribou Slobber, on Tuesday.

 

[Woodland]

Thanks for the welcome everyone.

It is a bit intimidating getting into homebrewing. It sounds like its common for people to to be overly anal and obsessive about things when there's no shortage of horror stories floating around about what can go wrong.

I'm heading off to Colorado to do a little fly fishing in 3 weeks, I plan on taking a some of the red ale with me for the trip. Right after I bottle the red ale I plan on doing a batch of amber ale before I go and let it sit in primary while I'm away. I'll try the extended primary method and let it sit for 3 weeks. Even though I'm totally new to this, my initial feelings are that racking to a secondary stirs up as much yeast and crud as it removes, not to mention the extra work of siphoning and sanitizing. Once I've tried it both ways I'll see how I like the results. It looks like I'll be drinking Sam Adams and Fat Tire for another 3 weeks. That's okay, I could use the bottles.