Timing Advice

[Oyarsa]

I'm brewing a beer for a local competition that stipulates the beer must be red. My first attempt failed. It turned out too dark and only is red if you shine a bright light through it.

My second attempt should be red just fine, but I'm running against time. The beer is intended to have dry hops, tart cherry puree, and bourbon oak chips added. I brewed night before last, but I'm brewing with a relatively new setup and at a new house. As a result, I got my water levels right, but didn't cool it down enough prior to putting in the fermenter. No big deal. I put the fermenter in the garage overnight to cool and added the yeast yesterday morning.

However, I think the garage is cooler than I thought for my yeast (US-04) and as of this morning, it hadn't started fermenting. I leave on a trip Friday and return April 10th. I have to have bottles submitted by the 14th. I was planning to add the oak cubes, cherries, and hops before leaving on Friday, but that was when I expected the fermentation to be mostly done by then.

Any harm adding those prior to fermentation finishing? I'll barely have time after the trip to carbonate and bottle, as is...

 

[day_trippr]

Well you're kinda bound up in that schedule, and waiting 'til you return won't allow a whole lot of character to be extracted before you need to think about the route to packaging.

So I'd wait 'til the last minute before leaving town for those additions in the hope you won't lose a lot of their character contributions via CO2 scrubbing...

Cheers!

 

[Oyarsa]

I suppose that's the worst that can happen, hopefully.