Q2XL

Recipes 

I brewed a barleywine late last week. After reading the other thread on aging the BW, I have decided to bulk age in the secondary for at least 9 months. I will be transferring about 4 gallons into a 5 gallon glass carboy.

Should I worry about the extra headspace in the secondary when it comes to oxidation?

malkore

Recipes 

its best to minimize headspace, but in many cases if you go to secondary when gravity has terminated, there's enough CO2 in solution from fermentation that it will outgas and form a CO2 blanket in the headspace.

some will also use CO2 from their kegging system to pre-fill the secondary and then rack into it.

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Malkore
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Q2XL

Recipes 

Anyone else have any input?

stoutaholic

Recipes 

+1 on adding CO2. I purge the secondary with CO2 prior to the transfer, in order to avoid oxygen pickup when the beer initially exits the siphon tubing, and then I top it off with CO2 after the transfer. My assumption is that if I create a nice thick layer of CO2 on top of the beer, and then seal up the secondary, that no oxidation from headspace is possible, since no oxygen should be in contact with the surface of the beer.

bubbachunk

Recipes 

Kill the head space!

Q2XL

Recipes 

How??? Care to elaborate?

EvilTOJ

Recipes 

Top up with boiled and cooled water, or with beer of a similar style like an IPA. An entire gallon of water will dilute it, so I'd go with the 2nd option.

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Q2XL

Recipes 

I understand that this will reduce the chance of oxidation, but diluting and/or adding a different beer to my BW would change the flavor of the BW.

Is this better then risking the chance of oxidation?

stoutaholic

Recipes 

Yeah, exactly, diluting the beer is not really an option.

Does anyone have a reason to think that purging with CO2 would not work? In other words, if the beer is fully coated with CO2, CO2 is heavier than air, and the carboy is sealed, how could any oxidation from headspace possibly occur?

MgMt_Home_Brew

Recipes 

I like to think that it works. I did it once with a regular Ale pale when dry hopping so I had a good amount of head space. I filled the bucket with CO2 (Really just guessed how much I was letting out) and then racked on top of it. Since it's heavier I figured it would stay on top of the beer and keep the O2 out. The beer turned out great.

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