I'm still getting ready for my first brew and had a couple more questions. The recipe kit I'll be using is the Brewers Best IPA. I've seen it mentioned a couple of times don't worry about carboys for the first couple of brews but I got one in my kit. Is it worth it to move over to it after the first 5-7 days of fermenting? Seems like a pretty easy process. Also, the recipe calls for sprinkling the yeast in after moving the wort to the ferment bucket and not to rehydrate. "How To Brew" makes it sound like I should ignore these instructions and rehydrate 20 minutes or so prior to adding to the ferment bucket? Which should I do? Thanks, Tim
Any transfer increases risk of infection. It also will definitely add oxygen to your beer. I would not move it. As for yeast I have heard you should rehydrate as it gives more viable cells. In my mind I have a hard time believing it has much of a difference. I have never heard of people having excess problems by not rehydrating. I rehydrate as I take a small bit of the water and save the yeast to build up later as a starter.
Rehydrating dry yeast is a very good idea. It's not technically necessary, but I try to think of it this way: I could create an amazing recipe, nail my mash temp, chill the wort perfectly, hit all my numbers, transfer to my primary seamlessly, but if I screw up my yeast (pitch too hot/cold, underpitch, pitch the wrong strain, etc.) my beer is going to suffer, and potentially significantly, because of it. Proper yeast procedures take very little time and pay huge dividends.
If you are already fermenting in a bucket, then I wouldn't move it to a carboy. A secondary fermentor should only be used if you are going to age your beer on fruit, oak chips, etc. However, that being said, is your fermentor bucket also your bottling bucket? If you are going to bottle your beer, then you do need to move the beer into a carboy so that you can get your bucket ready for the bottling. Just transfer the beer as gently as you can to avoid splashing.
Most of us would urge you to stay away from secondary unless you are bulk aging your beer. Oak and bugs would be the biggest two reasons for this. For an IPA, you can dry hop in your primary with very good results and a lot less work. Rehydrating your yeast can double the viable yeast count in the pack. I typically boil a little bit of RO water in the microwave. This water is in a small bowl with a small plate on top to cover the bowl. I let the water temperature come down while I'm mashing,steeping,boiling wort, etc. By the time I'm at ~100F, I'm well into brew day. Take a temp with a sanitized thermometer, pitch your yeast, and make sure you wait at least 10-20 minutes before you pitch the yeast into the wort. If it's more than 20, you'll be fine. Worst case scenario, you can probably pitch a packet of dry yeast into 5 gal of 1.065 wort and still make really good beer. Let's just make you go through good brew practices. Rehydrate.
RO/distilled water isn't the best for rehydrating, because when you first start to rehydrate, if there are no minerals in the water, you get too much osmotic pressure too quickly, which can damage or even kill the yeast cells.
The equipment kit I got had a ferment bucket, carboy, and bottling bucket so I'm good there. I plan on boiling a few gallons of water a day or two before and putting that in my bottling bucket to use as the addition to the ferment bucket to get me to five gallons. When I sterilize my ferment bucket and equipment is there any reason I can't pour that same solution into the bottling bucket to sterilize it? The kit came with IO Star.
I don't have the boil pot size that will allow be to do a full boil either, so I always add water (boiled water that morning that has cooled to room temp by when I need it) right after the boil to help with the cooling-down process of the wort, and in an amount that I estimate will get me to just short of the needed 5 gallons. When it's time to bottle I boil my priming sugar in a quart of additional water, and then allow it to cool. I put this sugar water into the bottling bucket and siphon the beer onto that liquid to help get it well mixed into the beer. To help guarantee that this liquid is well mixed into the beer (this is very important to help with getting a consistent amount of sugar into every bottle so that you have even carbonation in every bottle) I'll also gently stir (no splashing) the beer 2-3 times in the bucket during the bottling process.
One of my favorite things about doing full-volume boils (for my extract batches) is that I can chill all the wort together, so I don't have to worry about the temperature of the extra water that you add with partial boils.
Easy? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely .... not. Don't bother. At this point in your home brewing adventure ... it's a complete waste of time and effort. Re-hydrating dry yeast is worth the time and effort unless it's one of the brands where the manufacturer recommends against it.
I read most of the comments, but I want to push sanitize like crazy! and using the carboy for primary will be fine, keep it out of the light!
