I brewed up the Shining Star Pale Ale extract kit and it came out fantastic. I am going to brew it up again this weekend.
My yeast pack arrived at my door puffed up already, so I went to the LHBS and bought another WYeast smack pack. I pitched both of them not to waste anything. My question is: does pitching 2 packs of yeast do anything more than 1 would have? Is it a wate of money to pitch 2 smackpacks for a 5 gallon batch?
No, for most batches of any beer near or above 1.050, OG, two packs would be required to achieve a proper pitching rate.
Since you are a new brewer, spend some time on this forum researching the following.
Yeast pitching rates and yeast starters
Fermentation temperature control
Sanitation
Patience - allowing the beer plenty of time to finish fermenting and cleaning up
You could have over pitched, or maybe not. It depends on the viability of the yeast in the packs. There’s not a terribly simple answer to that. If the beer tastes good, then it doesn’t really matter…you made good beer.
Normally, two packs for a beer of that gravity is about twice as much as you need. Not ideal, but not necessarily bad. I would recommend getting your yeast locally, if possible, so you know the yeast should be good and you only have to pitch one pack (shipping and having the yeast exposed to high or low temps can kill the cells). You can also get some dry yeast to keep on hand, so if you pitch some yeast and fermentation doesn’t start after a couple days, you can pitch it. It last a long time in the fridge.
A step you can take in the future is a yeast starter. There is plenty of info on that in this forum, but you don’t have to worry about it for now, if you don’t want to.
