Beer Brewing

A friend of mine and I have been talking about brewing beer for the last few months, each of thinking that it would be a fun thing to try.  I personally was hoping not to have to purchase everything as the process can get fairly expensive quickly.  Each of us have received gift certificates to a local brew store and last weekend I went in and bought the beginning brew kit to kick-start the process.  I also bought it because the family is all heading out to Eastern Oregon this fall for what we are calling Harvest.  My aunt and uncle have several old apple trees on their property and we will be making cider for all the families, but we also want to try making hard cider. 

After considering several options I also decided that the only way that I can control the temperature of my fermentation process is to purchase a Johnson Controls Manual Thermostat Control Unit.  I looked for quite a while and though there may be some cheaper units from other brands online, this is the cheapest I could find this unit anywhere.  Some brew shops that carried it had it listed for $75+.  This allows you to tightly control the temperature of a fridge or freezer by cutting the power to the unit when the probes monitored temperature reaches the set point on the unit.  I have a chest freezer that has not been getting enough action to justify me buying a new fridge to dedicate to this project.  In the fall my basement may be cool enough to just air cool the beer, but until I get some way to measure the temp down there I have no way to know.

All in for the beginners kit and the temp monitor I am only at about $170 to get started brewing beer, which I don't think is too high for trying out a hobby.