I’m really eager to brew my first batch but still planning a couple of details. I would like to follow instructions as good as possible. As I live in southern Texas, the temperatures are normally higher than those at with the yeast should work so:
1.- What happens if it gets inside the house 5-10 C hotter than the temperature at which the yeast should work?
2.- How do you control temperature variations? Here normally the differences between temperatures in the morning and midday are around 10-15 C.
I will let others chime in, but in my opinion and experience, good cleaning/sanitation and fermentation temp control offer the two biggest “flavor return on investment” for new brewers, particularly if you are using dry yeast. Said differently, if you can control these well, you will make good beer. For the other stuff in the process, the kit’s instructions will get you home and you can hone other things later.
I will let others chime in, but in my opinion and experience, good cleaning/sanitation and fermentation temp control offer the two biggest “flavor return on investment” for new brewers, particularly if you are using dry yeast. Said differently, if you can control these well, you will make good beer. For the other stuff in the process, the kit’s instructions will get you home and you can hone other things later.[/quote]
I’ll second these opinions.
If you can’t control your temps at least with a swamp cooler, than don’t bother brewing the beer until you can. It will produce nasty beer, and you will feel like you need to drink it. Needless to say 5 gallons of bad beer lasts a really long time.
I started using the water bath in a storage bin to control my temps, and have since graduated to an old fridge with a temperature control on it.
You do have major temperature swings. A swamp cooler in your living area will work if the living area temperatures are fairly constant.
You could go a little more high tech. Search with Google for STC-1000. This is an inexpensive dual temperature controller for heating and cooling.
