Adding extra juice to already fermenting cider

Hi,

I'm new to brewing and I started a basic cider tonight as my first attempt.
At the moment I've got 3 litres of apple juice that started out with a specific gravity of about 1.050 in a glass demijohn.
I'm going to wait about 48 hours before adding another 1.5 litres to it so that it wouldn't overflow on me.

When I'm adding the 1.5L, will it have any bad effects if I just pour it in though a funnel? Or do I have to submerge a hose in the current batch so that there isn't any splashing etc.?

Also, the yeast I have is Young's cider yeast in a 5g packet. It says its good for up to 23 litres. I added the whole packet of yeast to the 1 gallon demijohn.
Is that too much yeast? Or does the amount not matter as long as its enough?

I'm making a batch of Magnum pear cider and Coopers australian lager in a 33 litre fermenter next, so I want to iron out the kinks and get a bit of practice before I do them

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Damn, just noticed I posted this in the beer forums, sorry. Although hopefully the question is relevant to both beer and cider.

You definitely over pitched for the 4.5 liter batch. At least it will make a good starter for your next 33 liter batch. When adding the extra 1.5 liters of juice to the existing 3.5 of fermenting cider, it is ok to splash. During the first 48 hours, yeast is using oxygen as a tool for replication, and it is an acceptable (and even beneficial) practice in breweries to oxygenate wort when "doubling up" a fermenter, brewing two or three batches into the same fermenter.

Thanks for the reply.

When you say it'll make a good starter for the next 33l batch, do you mean the yeast cake left behind or the whole thing? Will I be able to drink the current 4.5l or will it not clear?

It started fermenting much faster after I added the extra juice last night, about 2 bubbles per second through the airlock now.

I've used that much yeast in one gallon batches (even a half gallon) batch of various things before, and it's fine. It is technically an overpitch, since you could use way less than that, but nothing bad should happen.

coreire said:

Thanks for the reply.
Will I be able to drink the current 4.5l or will it not clear?

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Given time the yeast will fall out of suspension. You could make the process go faster by cold crashing the cider after it's done fermenting. Basically that's sticking it in a fridge for awhile; the cold causes the yeast to go dormant and fall out of suspension.

Great! Just what I wanted to hear.
Seeing as its my first batch I'm itching to drink it

I'll try cold crashing it when its done if its cloudy. If I do that will there still be enough yeast for carbonation when bottling?

How do you work out how much yeast is right for pitching?

There should still be enough yeast for carbonating, yeah. If you just want to play it safe then you could cold crash it until MOST of the yeast settles at the bottom, but there still seems to be some in the cider (I like the look of a cloudy cider personally).

It's usually more of a worry with underpitching as opposed to overpitching. I think those 5g dry yeast packets are good for up to 10gal batches. If you really want to get accurate with pitching rates, googling "yeast pitching rates" brings up a number of resources to help. You can pretty much ballpark it anyway unless you're making something where using a proper amount of yeast gives you a profile you're looking for (some belgian stuff underpitches). As I said, I would worry more about underpitching yeast than overpitching.