Don't you have to worry about skunking when outside? I need to move operations out of the kitchen, but that's always been one of my biggest fears.
No. As long as your follow the correct procedure while cooling and transferring wort to the fermenter, your chances of contaminating your beer are the same whether you brew inside or outside.
I use a semi-closed transfer system after the boil. I sterilize the chiller, tubing, and fermenter, and close off the boil kettle with a sterilized lid and the carboy with a sterilized carboy cap/tube (the wort is fed into a tube that goes down to the bottom of the carboy). I oxygenate the wort using an sterilized oxygen system and a similar sterilized carboy cap/tube device. I add yeast using a sterilized funnel, and then a sterilized carboy cap/blow-off device is put on the carboy before it goes into a fermenting chamber. Did I mention that I sterilize everything?
The only thing that I worry about when brewing outside are acorns in the fall (my patio is has several oak trees on the periphery). I brew inside my garage in the winter months, with the garage and back door open for ventilation, but it has to be pretty cold to drive me indoors.
"Skunking" beer, imho, has more to do with contaminating the beer with oxygen while it is fermenting and aging.
I've had beer in a clear glass skunk in minutes outside here so I've always been super paranoid about light contacting my wort and thereafter the finished brew. It is fermented and kegged while covered and lights on low. This is probably serious overkill (it is) but I'm concerned about losing my batch to off flavors. Seems to me that the same AAs that are being utilized in the boil are then present in the finished brew.
I need to eventually get brewing outside so the posts indicating no difference inside or out are reassuring.
Skunking is absolutely caused by direct exposure to sunlight and other UV.
I've always brewed in the garage so I don't know the effect of brewing in the sunlight, though.
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