Now the real wait starts.

[jman1972]

Well I just bottled my first batch of beer. I made a BB Witbier. It spent 12 days in primary. My gravity was 1.040 going into the fermenter. When I bottled yesterday it was at 1.010. I used 1 liter PET bottles and ended up with 17 bottles. Now the wait begins before I can drink it. I did taste it and it tasted like flat beer so i must have done something right. Now to decide what to do for the 2nd beer.

 

[beerman0001]

Start planning your next 5 of so. You need to start working on that pipeline. Those first 17 will be gone before they even reach there peak flavor.

 

[petey_c]

jman, you should get another fermenter, this way you can brew every ten days or so....

 

[TrainSafe]

Yep, once your friends find out about your new supply, it will "evaporate" quickly. Start building your pipeline.

 

[Piratwolf]

jman, you should get another fermenter, this way you can brew every ten days or so....

Or three more, so you can brew every weekend

 

[beergolf]

Or three more, so you can brew every weekend

That is my strategy..... I have 5 that I use. 4 for regular brews and one dedicated to Belgians that require a long time in the fermenter.

 

[venquessa]

This has started to eat at me too, already. I have one a week in bottles and I've started sampling it already! I put another in the fermenter, but until I finish the first lot, I have no bottles to put it in.

(Note: for the below, if you have project management software it might be more productive than a spreadsheet).
Being a geek as I am I took a spread sheet and made two columns labeled:

"Primary 1" ... "Bottles 1" ... "Beer in stock y/n"

Vertically the boxes are weeks. I then ran the pattern down the sheet with the following format:
2 weeks in primary, 3 weeks in bottles, 3 weeks drinking (optimistic!).

So the bottles are used for 6 weeks and the fermenter is idle for 4 weeks during a cycle. The full footprint cycle for the "line" is 6 weeks and the overlap (parallelization) is 2 weeks. The "no beer in stock" time is 3 weeks. (6 week footprint - 3 weeks drinking). It's MUCH easier to see on a spreadsheet (or tabbed out notepad text file).

It's obvious I need a second set of bottles first. It gets complicated to work out, easier with the spreadsheet.

Here is a PDF of what I mean:
http://www.campbell-multimedia.co.uk/temp/1forall.pdf

 

[Piratwolf]

I feel your pain, Ven. I had to work out a brew/ferment/bottle schedule to get ready for the holidays. I have two mini-fridges for ferm temp control, 4 carboys, and limited space. It was a hassle, but it worked out to 23.5 gallons of beer brewed, bottled & given as gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas day

 

[kh54s10]

Ask all your friends for bottles. I now have a couple hundred. It will be a while before I can keg so I need them. My plan is to get even more and get them filled.

Variety is the spice of life.