A Few Noob Questions

[mrcoldone]

First off I have an American Amber Brewers Best Kit that I'm brewing today and I was wonder if anyone's had any experience mixing hazelnut extract flavor to it. I bought a 2 oz hazelnut extract flavor and was gonna add it before bottling, but before I do that, I'm beginning to wonder if that will mess it up? Also I am worried that I'm brewing at too high of a temperature. I live in Phoenix and my house temperature ranges from 70-76 inside. Ive done the water bath with my first kit but didn't for the last two. So the question is, if I brewed on Monday would it be to late to put my fermenter (which has been fermenting for 4 days) to a water bath? I think it may be too hot because when I transferred a batch to the secondary today, it smelled like hard liquor. I'm stressed that I already screwed up one batch and I don't wanna screw up two! All help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Clonefarmer]

You can pull a sample before bottling and mix a few drops of the hazelnut extract in. This should give you an idea of what it'll do to the rest of the batch.

Most off flavors from being too hot happen in the first few days of fermentation. So it may be too late to cool it down, but it can't hurt to do it anyway.

 

[pericles]

+1 to everything Clonefarmer said.

I would argue that 70F is too hot for most yeast, and if your temperatures get as high as 74, that's almost certainly going to produce off-flavors. There are lots of ways to cool your wort - the water bath, a fermentation chamber, a chill box, etc.

In the short term, you might consider brewing a Saison. White Labs makes a yeast for them that loves warm weather - all the way up to 80F.