Safety corks for gallon jars

[copperconker]

my return to homebrewing after 20 years, big kit brewer in the late eighties, nineties loved tinkering with my brews then, spent last 3-4 months 2014 buying equipment of ebay, my nice purchase was 2 17ltr glass carboys with bungs for £20 and a woodfordes wherry kit. added 17ltr of spring water and it fermented away transferred to secondry 5-6 days later, after 10 days transfered to demijohns with safety corks and cold crashed outside on patio, after a week brought back into house as didnt want to have it to clear as need to have some yeast to carbonate the brew in bottles,been sat in dining room now 2 weeks ready to bottle, how long can i keep the brew in this state, can i dry hop it before bottling, very impressed with the wherry that i put another brew on monday using a white labs cider yeast wlp775 and 500g hopped light spray malt,
in a 7 gallon batch, looking for taste,flavour than strength on this brew,how long can i store the wherry under these conditions, as a old hand at winemaking i was use to corking up demijohns and leaving for months to mature, so any pressure build up would be safely vented using these corks on homebrew. need your thoughts on this folks.

 

[stesmi]

As long as it's airtight it'll last in these conditions easily for months, but not as long as wine (in my experience). But I'd be tempted to bottle and prime as soon as possible. The longer you condition without priming, the more yeast will drop from solution make it harder to carbonate. Also, a carbonated beer will still condition and last a helluva lot longer.
I suppose you can always add more yeast when bottling to carbonate, or force carbonate. But I'd still get some co2 into it sooner rather than later. Dunno if this helps or not? :ugeek:
As for dry hopping? I'd dry hop now too

 

[MyQul]

The yeast dropping out of suspension isnt a problem as you can just give the brew a stir to re-suspend (but of course that will defeat the purpose of your cold crash). However, as time go by the yeast in the brew will lose it's viabilty (die).

as Stesmi states you can just force carb or add more yeast. Commercial breweries that bottle condition their beer often add a second strain to carbonate there beer. Larger HBers do this too as the lagering process is quite long and the yeast is then too knackered to carbonate the beer properly especially as lager is quite carbonated

 

[Brewtus]

I have often left brews to clear for 6 weeks or more before conditioning and still had no problems with carbonating, just takes a little longer - maybe 3 weeks.

It does however result in beautifully clear, clean tasting beers with so little sediment as to be almost unnoticeable.

There will always (within reason) be some minute amount of yeast suspended and remember that these little guys reproduce as the eat up sugar and produce CO2.