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jaypes

It is, a nice!
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Hi all
Have just started my first brew yesterday, stock standard Coopers Pale Ale kit.
Everything seems well except upon me getting home from work tonight the fermenter is at approx 24-26 degrees.
I dont have a fridge or esky to place it in to regulate the temp, i am thinking of some wet towels but will this drop the temp too low overnight or is the brew already spoiled? Its all in my garage and i am in Sydney
Any pointers appreciated
Jaypes
 
I live in Darwin. I brew Coopers kits at 28C - 30C all the time. At least ten batches recently. I think I've brewed every single one of their ale kits at least once (no lager, for obvious reasons). I've never had a bad batch, ever. I've brewed the Pale Ale many times at those temperatures. It's important to keep the brew in primary for at least a couple weeks so the yeast can eat off any byproducts.

Does good temperature control gives you better beer? Absolutely. Does no temperature control mean undrinkable horse piss? No (for ales anyway).
 
The wet towels will work overnight.

The beer won't be ruined. It may just be sub-optimal. Sounds like you could still be on track for a better than average first beer.

Do a search for temp control techniques. Don't bother so much with recent threads though - pretty much all of them only talk about fridges. Back about 3 years ago people were giving out advice on all techniques, not just the easiest.

Good luck with it and welcome aboard.
 
Go for the wet towels. I don't think it will drop the temp too low. For a start it is a large body of water and takes time to change temperature. Secondly, fermentation is an exothermic process so produces heat, independant of the surrounding temperature. They say that the temp inside the fermenter may be a couple of degrees hotter than the ambient temp because of this.
 
Do a search for temp control techniques. Don't bother so much with recent threads though - pretty much all of them only talk about fridges.

As a contributor to such threads, including recent ones, I'd like to dissociate myself from that suggestion.

@ OP - get the temp down as quick as you can. Water baths are your friend.

@slash - there's a lot of not so good advice going around a lot on this forum but yours is pretty much up there with the not so goodest of them (unless you are brewing coopers saisons???). I'm sure you don't mean any harm but please keep such advice to yourself in future. You're likely to reinforce the idea that all HB is shit beer if you continue and maybe put a few new brewers off homebrewing.
 
As a contributor to such threads, including recent ones, I'd like to dissociate myself from that suggestion.
Of course, however, the generalisation still stands as stated.
 
I've recently used a water bath up here in QLD and it isn't easy to keep a stable temp. If I wasn't semi employed I'd have no hope. I now have a couple of fridges. One $97 and one $40. I also have an STC-1000 on one of them and another coming from China. Fridges are set and forget. Well worth it. I haven't gone AG though. FTW :beerbang:
 
I've recently used a water bath up here in QLD and it isn't easy to keep a stable temp. If I wasn't semi employed I'd have no hope...Fridges are set and forget. Well worth it.
I agree that fridges are much easier (and probably better by most measures) but I do question the value of telling someone on their first brew that they need a fridge to make good beer. How many people must that either turn away at the beginning because it seems like too much of an outlay or how many people buy a second fridge to brew in then quickly decide that brewing isn't for them?
 
but I do question the value of telling someone on their first brew that they need a fridge to make good beer.


^ this.

Up there with telling new brewers to go straight to AG when they don't even know what it stands for.
 
One of those is killing me right now.
 
Its seems logical that those who do not brew in a fridge would be more qualified to answer the question of whether or not brewing at higher temps produces good beer, or so one would assume. <_<
 
I don't brew in a fridge (or ferment in one - I do cold condition/lager in one though).

To add to that, many people who now brew in fridges used more primitive means of temp control before they set up their fridge.

Advising 30 degrees is OK is the most fundamentally flawed bit of info I've seen here for some time (beer style dependent but I don't think that's relevant here).

Then again, you don't seem to be all that opposed to offering advice abut things you have no knowledge or experience of based on most of your posts.
After all, sightless surely know the best way to help other sightless not walk out into traffic?
 
Its seems logical that those who do not brew in a fridge would be more qualified to answer the question of whether or not brewing at higher temps produces good beer, or so one would assume. <_<
Not if they say any ale brewed at 30C can be awesome. I'm not sure they're even qualified to drink good beer let alone tell others how to make it.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. I am watching a couple of cheap fridges on ebay, I was an electrician in a previous life and can hook up a temp controller hot/cold no probs.

Its only 30 hours into the brew, fingers crossed its still good - if not its my first attempt and will know what to do for next time
 
@slash - there's a lot of not so good advice going around a lot on this forum but yours is pretty much up there with the not so goodest of them (unless you are brewing coopers saisons???). I'm sure you don't mean any harm but please keep such advice to yourself in future. You're likely to reinforce the idea that all HB is shit beer if you continue and maybe put a few new brewers off homebrewing.

Huh? I'm not advising people brew at tropical temperatures, I'm advising that it's not the end of the world. To be honest I'm not sure what you are saying? That I'm wrong or misguiding people?

I'm not sure how anybody can say I'm wrong about my opinion of my beer. I make it, I drink it, I enjoy it. So I argue against the idea that beer made at warm temperatures will turn out undrinkable. I'm sure some styles and some kits might be ruined by the heat, but the question was specific to Coopers kits, which as I mentioned, I make at warm temperatures all the time and enjoy all the time. I'm sure many maybe most members of the forum know more about brewing and more about beer than I do, but I do know my way around a decent bottle of beer and feel qualified to make an evaluation.

If the question was, "Will ale fermented at a perfect 18C be superior to beer fermented in a Darwin flat?", I would say "Yes, absolutely". However, the question was, "Have I ruined my Coopers ale kit at 26C?" and my answer from my experience brewing dozens of Coopers ale kits in a warm climate (with 44 litres more currently fermenting!) is "No".

Juuust saying. :ph34r:

Not if they say any ale brewed at 30C can be awesome. I'm not sure they're even qualified to drink good beer let alone tell others how to make it.

And this is just entering ********* territory. Try to give some advice from personal experience and get an earful for it because my opinion is different to yours.
 
Its only 30 hours into the brew, fingers crossed its still good
Avoiding high temps is most important early on but, as I mentioned previously, I don't think it will be the sort of beer you need to tip (assuming everything else has been done well). If you get the temps down a bit and keep them stable the brew will definitely be better than if you don't.

if not its my first attempt and will know what to do for next time
That's exactly the attitude that will make a better beer every time you brew. Good on ya.
 
And this is just entering ********* territory. Try to give some advice from personal experience and get an earful for it because my opinion is different to yours.
I read plenty of advice that differs from my perspective. It is only the fuckwits who try to tell new brewers to make shit beer that I call a fuckwit, fuckwit.

I accept that your location means you have to make certain concessions in regard to good practice - I'd be happy to leave it at that if it seemed you felt the same.
 
Kit beer at 30C is AWESOME!

As a chaser to a shot of metho.
 
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