Hey all,
Please bear with me as I'm a "brewbie" and this is my first time posting here.
I visited my local brewer on Saturday with the intent of brewing a beer in time for a family Christmas Eve party. I was told that most beers wouldn't be ready by then, but that I could double the amount of yeast in my primary to increase fermentation speed (without affecting flavor, he said) and have it ready in time for Xmas. My primary is now happily bubbling away right next to me while I anxiously wait for it to finish, but I do have quite a few questions:
1) What would have happened if I didn't pitch that second vial of liquid yeast? What can I expect from this batch to be different, since it has two vials?
2) When do I take my next gravity reading? I've read that it's usually sometime after bubbling stops in your air lock.. when that happens, do I just open the cover of the primary, stick in my thief and take my gravity reading, and then repeat the process the next day to see if it's changed?
3) The recipe kit I used doesn't call for a secondary fermentation stage, but the recipe also didn't take into account that I used two vials of yeast. Would secondary fermentation be helpful for this, and would it just slow the process down even more?
4) When I eventually rack the beer from my primary into my bottling bucket, I just take the lid off of both and then use my autosiphon to transfer the beer to the bottom of the bottling bucket, correct? I recall reading something about minimizing the amount of air you get into the beer, how do you do that precisely?
5) And lastly, the recipe I used used two different types of hop pellets and some dried orange peel. Although the recipe said to put all of them into different muslin bags at various stages of the wort, is that really necessary? I mean, it's going to all be strained out when you put it into your primary anyway.. I know the recipe was referring to hop plugs and not pellets, but since they ran out they put hop pellets in it instead, and I'm wondering if it's okay to NOT use a muslin bag with pellets / things like orange peel.
I'm sorry this is a pretty lengthy post, but I appreciate any help you experts can provide!!
Please bear with me as I'm a "brewbie" and this is my first time posting here.
I visited my local brewer on Saturday with the intent of brewing a beer in time for a family Christmas Eve party. I was told that most beers wouldn't be ready by then, but that I could double the amount of yeast in my primary to increase fermentation speed (without affecting flavor, he said) and have it ready in time for Xmas. My primary is now happily bubbling away right next to me while I anxiously wait for it to finish, but I do have quite a few questions:
1) What would have happened if I didn't pitch that second vial of liquid yeast? What can I expect from this batch to be different, since it has two vials?
2) When do I take my next gravity reading? I've read that it's usually sometime after bubbling stops in your air lock.. when that happens, do I just open the cover of the primary, stick in my thief and take my gravity reading, and then repeat the process the next day to see if it's changed?
3) The recipe kit I used doesn't call for a secondary fermentation stage, but the recipe also didn't take into account that I used two vials of yeast. Would secondary fermentation be helpful for this, and would it just slow the process down even more?
4) When I eventually rack the beer from my primary into my bottling bucket, I just take the lid off of both and then use my autosiphon to transfer the beer to the bottom of the bottling bucket, correct? I recall reading something about minimizing the amount of air you get into the beer, how do you do that precisely?
5) And lastly, the recipe I used used two different types of hop pellets and some dried orange peel. Although the recipe said to put all of them into different muslin bags at various stages of the wort, is that really necessary? I mean, it's going to all be strained out when you put it into your primary anyway.. I know the recipe was referring to hop plugs and not pellets, but since they ran out they put hop pellets in it instead, and I'm wondering if it's okay to NOT use a muslin bag with pellets / things like orange peel.
I'm sorry this is a pretty lengthy post, but I appreciate any help you experts can provide!!