Half full carboy

I have a porter with vanilla beans in my 5 gallon glass carboy. I want to add some oak chips soaked in makers mark to half the batch, but all I have is a 5 gallon glass carboy, 6 gallon plastic fermenter and 6 gallon plastic bottling bucket. The beer tastes great already so I am a littler nervous about adding whiskey soaked oak chips.

Could I rack half of the vanilla porter to the bottling bucket, bottle that today, then add the 2.5 ounces of oak chips to the unbottled porter for a day or two and then bottle it on Tuesday? I am worried that all the airspace in the carboy could cause some stale off flavors. Also mabey 2.5 ounces of chips for 2.5 gallons is a little too much. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

-Eric

I don't know about the amount of chips to use, but in terms of the head space if it's just going to be like that for a couple of days you don't really have anything to worry about. Obviously, be careful you aren't unnecessarily sloshing it around and everything, but your beer won't oxidize from a little more headspace over 48 hours.

I don't know if I can agree with marubozo. Having tried to finish off a 2 day old growler of local commercial beer, it does not play well with Oxygen.

As to the chips & Makers Mark, I'd drink a beer followed by a shot of Makers Mark and call it done! Of course I am pretty much against adding anything to my beer beyond the basics.

This is a good question. I haven't seen any hard statistics on oxygen exposure.

On the one hand, you have probably 50 square inches of surface area or so on top of the beer versus your two and a half gallons of beer, which isn't being agitated or anything, so it's not like all of your beer is oxidizing at one time. On the other hand, it's a risk.

I would try it, and find out (possibly the hard way). Then you can come back and tell us, and then we are all more informed (and worst-case scenario is you had a couple of gallons of beer go slightly funky, heh).