G'day from Morayfield

[Donz]

I'm new to brewing and trying a few kits out, Looking forward to reading how you guys brew.
Is there any good tips going for newbies using kits?
Edit: I've got my 4th and 5th kit beers going now and just bought a 2 tap kegerator with 3 kegs. First 2 brews are bottled and third is kegged.

 

[Brewnicorn]

Off to a flying start Donz. Welcome and enjoy the process mate. Keep us posted on how the brews turn out. All the best eh.

 

[Bribie G]

Most important is to have temperature control. Actually going into the winter shortly you shouldn't have a whole lot of trouble, in my kit days on Bribie Island I fermented most of the winter just in the garage. Try to keep the brew to under 22 degrees if you can, anyway.

Temperature controlled fridge is the ducks nuts but if you can spare the freezer space, you can use a dead fridge or even just beach towels and swap frozen soft drink bottles of ice daily.

Welcome to the obsession.

There's also a brew club (Pine Rivers Underground Brewers) that meets at Kallangur monthly. Recommended.

 

[Donz]

Cheers, I do think that all 5 brews so far will be affected by the heat, average temps are around 26 C, I have tried the first brew after 2 weeks and had a bit of tang, but was a pretty good start. I'll leave it in the fridge now for another 2 weeks to see if it mellows out.
I'll be looking into a broken fridge first as $$ is hard to come by these days and my wife almost fainted when I bought the keg system home
2 largers, a draught, a blonde, and a pale ale so far.. fingers crossed.

 

[Bribie G]

Yup a bit of nail polish type aroma is typical with fermenting hot.

Despite people on the forums who will tell you to chuck out the kit yeast from under the lid and use a "better" yeast, those kit yeasts are often pretty ok because they are more forgiving of temperature swings that would cripple some of those so called "better" varieties.

What did your wife say to the blonde when you brought her home ? h34r: h34r: