yeast and added sugar questions

[mr jones]

ok, so i bought a mr beer, i know my bad, a few weeks ago and i just bottled my inaugural batch. and i have an oatmeal stout mix i am doing tomorrow. i already have my yeast incubating. the yeast is for a 5 gallon batch of beer so will adding it to a 2 gallon batch do anything bad to the beer? my next question is about spices and extra sugars. when do you introduce something like molasses? when you boil the wort, after the wort is boiled or right into the fermenter? How about spices like cinnamon? should that go in a spice bag or right into the wort without the bag? and at what point should it be introduced? thanks you guys, i will have another post in the intro section when i get back from publix.

-nick

 

[Scimmia]

well, as far as the yeast goes, depending on how much we're talking about here, you could be overpitching, which can cause the beer to not taste right. The yeast produce flavors while they do their thing in the beer, and you'll be short cutting a part of that cycle.

 

[mr jones]

according to the recipe i need 2 of the yeast packets they provide anyway so i'm hoping its only like 1/5th more than i need instead of 3/5ths more. what do you think? still too much? if so will just leaving a little out rectify the problem?

 

[malkore]

i wouldn't worry too much about the yeast. a little over pitching isn't gonna hurt a mr. beer brew.

you'd add molasses during the boil...I'd do it about 15 minutes from the end of your boil, and stir it a lot...may even wanna cut the heat to avoid scorching it on the bottom of the pan until it dissolves.

 

[Scimmia]

Well, it's fairly easy to figure out where you are. Properly stored and rehydrated dry yeast has about 20 billion cells per gram. Pitching rate should be somewhere in the neighborhood of .75 million cells per ml of wort for every degree plato for a standard ale. This translates to about 71 billion cells for a 2 gallon batch if we're talking about a 1.050 starting gravity, or about 3.5 g of dry yeast. I've heard that up to 20% over won't be a problem, how big are your packets?

 

[mr jones]

i got one of the ones where you hit it in the corner to release the nutrients and then let it swell in the bag for a few hours then i moved it to a sanitized cup to incubate for a day. then when i added it to the wort i shook it up, poured it in, and left some in the cup. hopefully it will even out. i will know it about 2 weeks. i added some cinnamon to the wort will it mix in or should i filter it out before bottling?

-nick

 

[Scimmia]

ah, ok, when you said packet, I was thinking dry, but it sounds like we're talking about liquid. Sounds like a Wyeast pack, do you know if it was an Activator or a Propagator?

Edit, you know, we're past this point anyway, so nevermind.

 

[mr jones]

yeah i think it was wyeast it just said british ale, it was what the local brew store guy said would be fine in it.