First timer about to burst my hops "cherry"

Solid response… thanks all… will place order shortly and post about my progress!

Looking forward to it…

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Temperature in the complex basement is 74… :frowning: so could cause issues with fermenting!
Should I revert back to Saison and scrap the Sierra & Hoegaarden batches? or still give it a shot?
How much will my batch be messed up due to temperature?

If you have room in a closet or anywhere in your apartment, you can grab a big bucket and make a simple swamp cooler. I use a 20 gallon bucket for my 6.5 gallon carboys, you should be able to get away with a 5 gallon or less bucket fairly easily for a 1 gallon batch. You just need a bucket or vessel big enough to hold your fermentor in a water bath. The basic gist is that you fill the bucket with enough water to cover at least half of your fermentor and then rotate ice packs out once or twice per day to keep the temp down. I saved some of my LME containers from back when I used to brew extract and use them as ice packs. I have fermometer strips on all my carboys to help monitor fermentation temp. You will get much better results in the mid 60 degree range than you will at 74. Your fermenting beer will always be above ambient temp in the room, sometimes by a significant margin.

:beers:
Rad

This is my very simple swamp cooler set up. Ambient temperature is usually 68°F. I can drop the temperature of the fermenting beer 8°F when the fan is blowing on the wet towel. Using ice bottles in the water tray would drop the temperature considerably more.

Enter “swamp cooler” in the search box for more ideas. You will only need to keep the temperature of the beer controlled during the first few days of active fermentation. This can be three to five days usually. After active fermentation is over the temperature of the beer can be allowed to slowly rise.

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