Mixing questions: Lactose, Yeast, and Clearing

Couple of quick procedural questions:

--Since I've been making 1 gal test batches, the way I've been using yeast is to mix in with water and nutrient and storing the unused liquid in the fridge in a Glad container. Is this going to hurt the yeast's ability to do its thing?

--Lactose is hard to get through a funnel into bottles- would there be any harm in putting the lactose in the primary at the start?

--I just read that cider takes 6-9 weeks to clear. If I don't care about clarity, can I just bottle it after a month (unless it's still bubbling, of course, such as the 11% Apfelwein I've got going) and call it good, or would there be other reasons I should leave it in the primary longer? There are those who have said that you should get the cider off its lees after a month to avoid off flavors- I guess if I wanted clear cider without off flavors, I'd have to use a secondary to clear without lees? (1 mo. Primary -> 2 mo. Secondary -> 2 mo.+ Bottle?)

I'd try to dissolve the yeast in water right before you use it. When you dissolve it in water, you're basically waking it up from hibernation and if you leave it in the fridge with no food, it won't be as healthy as if you had just dissolved it. If you're using EC1118 or something, it's pretty cheap, so I'd just dissolve smaller bits.

If you ONLY have S. cerevisiae in your cider (ie cider is pasteurized), adding lactose to primary should be fine. However, if you have other bugs in there, they may be able to use lactose and would not yet be killed off from etoh at the start of fermentation.

You might want to consider bulk aging to let the flavors develop in your cider. I'd go with the secondary. You'll want to get rid of the gross lees after ~1 month--the off flavors are from the yeast going cannibal and eating each other...and putting out some nasty tasting compounds in the process. There's no telling when this might start to happen, it depends on the environment, etoh, nutrients, yeast etc. but better safe than sorry. (some people are fine after ~4 months, but others aren't...)

good luck!

Thanks! Good information-

I was wondering why my last two batches didn't start fermenting, thinking it was the refrigerated yeast, but it turns out it was too cold in the garage! I moved them inside and they're bubbling away happily-