Newbie questions about pectin,yeast nutrient, & too much yeast?

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Hi all,
New to wine making (& this forum), working with my first batch of apple/cider (a few with fresh apple puree) & one bottle of orange/banana from store bought juice. Just started using wine yeast (tryin to step it up from just making cider hooch from bread yeast). Mainly because of the fruit puree, I went and got pectin & yeast nutrient (unfortunately a strategy enacted in hindsight, all the bottles with the puree were already fermenting). Some of the bottles with the puree were overflowing from the Co2 pressure into the airlocks as well so I poured some out, and added pectin & yeast nutrient to all the bottles (and a bit more pre-activated yeast to the bottles that I poured some liquid/puree out of to compensate). I noticed the fermentation definitely seemed to intensify after this but about 12 to 24 hours later it appeared that the initial stage of fermentation had already finished (most of the yeast settled at the bottom and the balloons (the tougher punch ones with the rubber bands) droopy (but still appear to have a bit of inflation from Co2). My questions are: Did I hinder the process by adding the pectin/nutrient/extra yeast after significant fermentation had occured? Or did it just speed up the process? If everything is kosher, I'm under the impression that a good strategy would be to do my first rack at about 25 to 30 days, is this correct? Any extra advice for an eager new brewer? :ban:
Will
 
You did speed up the process by adding the nutrient. Somes that is needed, but sometimes it can hurt your flavor profile to do so. Homebrewing a learning process, so take goods note bothh during fermentation and during tasting time.

The pectic enzyme will not hurt or help fermentation. Many folks add it before fermentation to breakdown the celll walls of the apples, thus giving more juice over to ferment. When you add it post fermentation, you are just looking to clarifythe cider.

Hope that helps! :)
 
I'm not sure what your set up is like, but if you're getting blow-off, you're better off using a blow off tube into a bucket of sanitizer.

As far as your question, it's kind of hard to answer. What temp are you fermenting at? If you're too hot, you could have crazy active yeast, but they'll be producing fusel alcohol. How much yeast did you add to what OG? If you had a healthy fermentation, why did you add more yeast?

Adding too much yeast can cause off flavors. The byproducts of properly maintained yeast create wanted flavors. Having too much yeast doesn't give time for those flavors to develop. There are pitching calculators to help figure out how much yeast is best.
 

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