How do you all avoid oxidizing your beer during transfers (to secondary, to bottling bucket)? I personally don’t use a secondary unless I am oaking or aging something with fruit or bourbon. That said, I am still interested in hearing different strategies used to avoid oxidation. Thanks in advance for your posts.
I use CO2 to make all post-pitch transfers.
What and how? I STILL don’t keg…so where to get the CO2? Then how do you “flush” the vessel? Don’t want to sound too redundant here, but I think a lot of people could learn something here.
I siphon gently so there’s no splashing and otherwise don’t worry about it.
[quote=“GoldenTrout”]What and how? I STILL don’t keg…so where to get the CO2? Then how do you “flush” the vessel?[/quote]If you don’t have CO2 you obviously can’t do this. But I ferment in buckets, so I use a lid with two holes, one for the stainless racking cane, one for the CO2, then pressurize the headspace to start the siphon and turn it down to a trickle to keep positive pressure during the transfer. Flushing is done through the diptube in the keg prior to transferring. If bottling, I flush the bottle first, then put a bottling wand on the end of the siphon from the fermenter and fill the bottles directly rather than use a bottling bucket.
I’m going to have to give that a shot Shadtree thanks for sharing . For now I use a 1/2 inch auto siphon and just like Denny said siphon gently and keep the end of the siphon hose under the surface of the top of your beer while racking. No problems so far
i didn’t know there was a risk the first few times and i siphoned with great force and splashing and never had an issue. since i found out that’s a bad method i started siphoning gently and still haven’t had an issue. i think i got away with it because i didn’t worry about it.
Siphon gently so there’s no splashing and you don’t need to worry about it.
One of the reasons why I asked is because I recently had an IPA get pretty dark on me in less than 4 months. I do understand that racking gently (no splashing) is the way and that is how I do it. Is oxygen the main culprit when a beer gets darker or am I dealing with something completely different?
Interesting…I’m not sure if it’s possible for a beer to darken with oxidation, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced or heard about it happening before. Even if it were oxidation, I’m pretty sure you’d have some serious flavor issues along with it, which would probably make a color change the least of your worries.
As others have said, if you’re reasonably careful with your transfer process, it’s not likely you’ll have any perceptible problems.
Pretty much covers it. If your beer is oxidized, you’ll taste it, not just see a color change.
This. If you’re careful, you’re not going to have a problem.
