a couple.concerns about my second brew.

I just finished my second brew and everything went smooth until I arieated. When I was shaking my fermenter my three piece airlock had vodka in it. I wasn't thinking. I believe some of it went into the beer. What will this do? Secondly, I forgot to stir the yeast in after I pitched it and it saturated. I am hoping that by shaking the bucket the yeast was sufficiently distributed. Did I cause any irreversible damage?

No, everything's fine. A few drops of vodka in a batch of beer is so minimal.

A tablespoon of vodka? Insignificant.

The yeast will know what to do. Sometimes I rehydrate, sometimes I just dump the pack in dry (when I'm not making a starter with liquid yeast, that is). There is a logical case to be made for rehydrating prior to pitching. But AFAIK, the final result is beer in either case.

No worries!

It was probably a quarter to half of the airlock. So around an oz at most. I feel better. Thanks

Honestly, you could have added a PINT of your average 80 proof vodka, and the net result would be a slightly dryer beer, as it would be about 1% more alcohol than the original recipe would produce on it's own. I'd highly doubt the yeast would notice at all, unless you're already making a very high gravity beer.

So an ounce, a 16th as much as my example, is like you drank a shot of vodka from the glass before you poured your beer in. The ratio of vodka that would cling to the glass is about equivalent to what went into your beer.

Yeast rehydration is largely unnecessary to produce decent to even excellent results- the question would merely be in how long it takes to start, and perhaps enough to notice some repeatability issues if you were to compare a rehydrated batch versus one pitched dry. That alone should NOT be enough to keep you from making a good batch.