Ferm temp, splitting yeast

I am brewing my first batch this weekend, an ipa kit from morebeer and I ordered the white labs california ale yeast from to hopefully "improve" my first beer. My 1st question is: My fermentation room "read:laundry room" is around 63-64 degrees during the day. What can I do cheaply to raise my fermentation temp up without having to turn up the heat? I am fermenting in a 6.5 or 7 gallon glass carboy. The less impact the hobby has, the better, if you get my drift.

The next question is about the yeast, can I use half the vial and use the other half for my dunkelweitzen kit which was shipped with dry yeast? Call me thrifty.

Not sure why you want to raise your temperature. I do all my ales around 60-62F. What is the night temperature? If you have to adjust temperatures, sit the carboy in a bin full of water with either a fish tank heater or ice filled water bottles that you swap out. You can cool or heat as needed depending on your situation.

For the yeast, you could make a really big starter and split it or ferment the first beer, rack to secondary, then pitch another wort on top of the first yeast cake. The dunkelweizen is probably not the best candidate for that as the yeast selection is an important component to that beer.

63-64 degrees is perfect! If you pitch the yeast into the wort when the wort is 68-70 (after chilling it after the boil), that should work great.

You shouldn't split the yeast- in fact, it's probably not even enough yeast to do a regular 5 gallon batch with. Most of the time, a starter is recommended for liquid yeast. The cell count in one package is barely enough to provide enough yeast for a medium alcohol batch. You can get by with one vial, and many people do, but it's not the optimum amount of yeast. Splitting it to even a smaller amount would be detrimental to the beer.

If you're interested in saving money on yeast (and who isn't!), then check out yeast propagation and yeast washing in our yeast forum.

Well if ales are good at 63 or 64 I am good!!! I am planning on doing a single fermentation in the large carboy and I gather that the CO2 buildup will prevent oxidation. I just know if I keep racking and messing with the beer, I'll get some nasty thing in there and mess up the 1st batch.

For the large carboy(6.5 or 7), would it be better to use one of those orange caps for the top and use a blowoff tube or should I do a rubber stopper and an airlock? Also, how long should I wait before bottling (IPA), I hear the longer the better maybe a month??

brando said:

Well if ales are good at 63 or 64 I am good!!! I am planning on doing a single fermentation in the large carboy and I gather that the CO2 buildup will prevent oxidation. I just know if I keep racking and messing with the beer, I'll get some nasty thing in there and mess up the 1st batch.

For the large carboy(6.5 or 7), would it be better to use one of those orange caps for the top and use a blowoff tube or should I do a rubber stopper and an airlock? Also, how long should I wait before bottling (IPA), I hear the longer the better maybe a month??

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I always just use a bung and an airlock, especially at cooler temperatures. If you need a blow-off tube, though, they are easy to set up.

For an IPA, I usually bottle about 3-4 weeks after brewday. The first two weeks are for primary, and then I usually dry hop for a week before bottling.