I got a nice home-brew kit from my coworkers as a wedding gift and after buying some additional equipment, I had my first brew day on July 29th. Now, it’s day 10 and fermentation is completed, no bubbles, foam is gone (I don’t have a hydrometer so going to wing it this time). I have my honeymoon coming up (I’ll be out of town for a week), so I was hoping to get some advice from fellow homebrewers on what I should do.
Option 1: Leave in primary until I return (August 28th), dry hop then, bottle during the weekend (September 2nd). That’d be roughly 5 weeks in primary.
Option 2: Rack to secondary this week (I’ve read mixed reviews on secondary, but since it’d be a long fermentation time, it may be better?), dry hop August 28th, bottle that weekend.
Option 3: Add dry hops this week to primary (maybe august 11th, and bottle during the middle of next week).
As you can tell, it’s my first batch so I want to make sure that I don’t mess anything up. I’m using the Chinook IPA Extract kit from Northern Brewers for recipe reference.