53 gal cider barrel

Hi all, I am new to this forum. I just recently filled my new cider barrel from jim beam from a local orchard. I was wondering if adding cider yeast would help or hurt the process. How much?
How little? Side note, I added 20 lbs of white sugar and 4lbs of brown. Smells awesome after 3 days. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Holey apples, Batman! That's a lot of cider! Is this for personal consumption or a business?

 

Add cider yeast as opposed to what? With that amount of cider at stake, I would absolutely not take the chance on spontaneous fermentation. You could easily end up with nearly 2 barrels' worth of undrinkable funk if you just leave it to the wild microbes. (You could also get lucky, but the chances of that are low).

As for how much yeast to add, well, you'd need to calculate that based on the volume and gravity of what you've got. Adding all that sugar will drive up the gravity, meaning more yeast will be needed. There are calculators online to help you work out pitch rates, but with this volume and lots of sugar, you will be looking at a lot of yeast.

 

A better plan would have been to ferment the cider, then transfer to the oak barrel for flavor/aging. You can then pull the cider out when you've reached the oak character you're looking for. Cleaning out the lees left over after primary is going to be a PITA, plus there's a good chance the cider will be over-oaked since its a new barrel. I'd pitch about 10 packs of 71-B yeast ASAP.
Since you just put it in there, if you can get a food-safe plastic barrel, you could still siphon the cider out and ferment in the plastic, then put it back when its done.
After a several runs, you could ferment in the barrel if you wanted to, but I don't really see any advantage to doing that.

 

Thanks for the replies. My family going back generations, have made cider due to the abundance of Apple orchards around here. The old timers knew what they were doing. I plan on bottling alot of it to store in my wine cellar. Although I'm around cider makers, they are so far ahead I'm playing catch up to their knowledge. I get bits and pieces, but i couldnt pass up the opportunity and the barrel. About 90 percent don't use any sort of yeast, I thought it would maybe bring a more consistent yield for me. This is my first batch, and I want it to be good. I have enough cider yeast for 50 gallons. Thanks

 

Maybe a better way but right now pull off 5 gal. And add yeast. Then I’d add Camden to the rest to kill any bacteria. When the 5 gal. is going I’d add it back.