Seems I have some oxidation issues...

I just opened up a bottle of my Centennial Blonde. Great clarity, bit darker than I want, and a cardboard taste to it. I think I know how it happened though. Towards the end of my bottling I tilted the bucket and at one point it slipped, sloshed, and made a bit of a mess. Thinking my biggest issue was infection I kept bottling the last 6-12 bottles.

I have a good idea which bottles were the last ones, but my issue is that this batch was made for a family reunion the first weekend after July 4th. If some of the earlier bottles turn out fine I'll probably still use them and just drink the others myself. Hope I don't have to dump the batch due to oxidation from something else.

How long has everything taken to get to this point?

I brewed this on 4/27, bottled on 5/24. Yeah I tasted some others that should have been before my bottling accident and they had the cardboard flavor as well, though not as much. Think I can still use them, though I won't be as happy about it. Oh well, I need to be more careful. Now that I think about it my 2nd batch of beer I made had this flavor but I only ever got it when I drank from a Sam Adams glass. Maybe I should get a carboy carrier so that I don't jostle it as much.

Carboycarriers aare like $15
Milk crates are way cheaper

unionrdr said:

The cardboard flavor is from oxidation. Try Not sloshing,splashing,pouring roughly when the brew is done. That should do it. They claim high temps at storage can do this as well. But,I've found,o2 absorbing caps deter this quite a bit.

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Yeah I figure it is from jostling. I do use oxy caps but they either didn't seem to help or my getting them wet took out that capacity. I keep everything indoors with a max of 80 degrees so I'm not sure that would be it. I fermented at 72.

I think I had a few brews suffer from this as well, however, I just switched to kegging, so I'm hoping that it well help that

Doesn't oxidation take longer than this to show up? I was under the impression that it was a long term storage thing. Could it be that there are off flavors from fermenting a little too high?

I believe it takes a long time either from A) fermenting in plastic (which is debated) or B) if you use cheap caps that allow oxygen to slowly permeate. OTH this was a fairly fast process since a lot of o2 was introduced fairly quickly.

I had something similar happen to my honey brown a couple years ago. I fermented it to warm and held it to warm during the secondary because I was trying to get the yeast to stay active. I let it go 6 weeks or so before bottling then let it sit at room temp.