I am a week into my first ever home brew and wondering if I should transfer it to my secondary fermenter. I am brewing the Block Party kit that was in with the starter equipment kit i bought, after boiling the wort i had an OG of 1.048 and after 7 days it is now at 1.018. I am not sure if I should leave this for a few more days before siphoning over.
I also made a little tweek to the recipe and added Cascade hops at the end of the boil and was thinking of adding more to dry hop and possibly some grapefruit peel during secondary fermentation. I was wondering if anyone would advise against this.
I appreciate any advice people can give.
Happy brewing everyone
First, congratulations on your first brew and welcome to the forum! Great place for answers and camaraderie.
You really don’t have to transfer the beer to a secondary-a lot of us just leave the beer in primary for around three weeks then bottle or keg. You’ll find opinions on both sides of secondary on this site, and you can experiment both ways and see what works for you. I’m just in the slightly lazy camp and don’t see a need for secondary unless I’m adding fruit or need the fermentor for another brew.
Since this is your first brew, my advice would be to leave it alone for another week, check gravity again, and if it’s the same, you’re safe to bottle. If not, leave it alone until gravity is the same over about a three day period. If this is a one gallon kit, just let it be for three weeks before bottling-gravity samples can take up a big percentage of your beer.
Also, since it’s your first brew, I wouldn’t tinker with the recipe. Get a feel for the process first, then get a feel for what certain ingredients bring to the table, then you can futz with the recipes. For you, right now, getting the process down pat is the most important thing. If you use a proven recipe and your process is good, you’ll make good beer. Just be forewarned, this hobby is addicting-next thing you know you’ll be buying $1000 worth of equipment and wondering what just happened!!
Cheers,
Ron
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I’m with @frenchie. You’re risking contamination or oxidation with a useless transfer. I usually let all my beers sit in primary for 4 weeks. Also a good idea to brew a few batches per the recipe before tweaking things.
Congrats on your 1st beer and welcome to the hobby, addiction, obsession or whatever you may call it. There’s a great bunch of guys on here that have helped me through over the past 5 years and you won’t be any different.
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[quote=“brewmanchu, post:3, topic:25553, full:true”]
You’re risking contamination or oxidation with a useless transfer.[/quote]
I would agree to this if you’re using poor at sanitizing equipment and rack haphazardly. The beer has dissolved CO2 which really protects it from oxidation.
But I do agree with @frenchie and @brewmanchu that you should brew the recipe as is until you get your process down. If it doesn’t turn out well it makes it difficult to assess if it was a processing error or a ingredient error.
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Thanks for the advise. Will stick to the recipe for my first few brews till I get the hang of it and learn what works best.
Thanks
Russell
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