Shaked secondary by accident...did I oxidize my beer?

I made a high gravity Scottish Wee Heavy this Monday night. I wanted to be sure to give it a good shaking to help the yeast do their thing. I also have an Irish Ale in secondary that is ready to be bottled. Both carboys are sitting on a counter in my basement. They sit about 18" away from each other. While I was shaking the heck out of my new beer I noticed that I was shaking the entire counter. My Irish Ale was moving around a bit in the secondary. I checked on my Irish Ale last night and noticed a small ring of foam at the top and a few spots of foam floating in the middle. Did I oxydize my beer by shaking it? Or did I maybe just kick up the yeast a little bit? I am certainly a newbie and have never ran into this situation. I know that I should just forget about it and pretend it never happened, but I want to learn from any mistakes I might have made. My understanding is if I did introduce a little oxygen at this point my beer might just not quite last as long? I would appreciate any information on the matter.

Relax. Since it was in the secondary, it was probably covered by a layer of CO2, so by shaking it, it wasn't exposed to any oxygen. The bubbles/foam you are seeing are probably from excess CO2 being knocked out of solution by the shaking.

No but your yeast is dizzy now and will flocculate to the top.

GilaMinumBeer said:

No but your yeast is dizzy now and will flocculate to the top.

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I see, if I just let it set for a couple days will it go back down to the bottom? Or does it even matter?

Now you have to change your name to William and arm wrestle me for my screen name

jsharp said:

I see, if I just let it set for a couple days will it go back down to the bottom? Or does it even matter?

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Yes, if you let it sit for a while longer it will settle back down. Honestly, it doesn't even matter. It would just result in a little more sediment in the bottles/keg.

jsharp said:

I see, if I just let it set for a couple days will it go back down to the bottom? Or does it even matter?

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Only if you invert your fermenter.







Give it some time to settle back out, the colder the better. Ideally, if you are going to a secondary you want to make sure it is in a plce where it won't have to move at bottling transfer so you don;t stir up any more of the powdery yeast.

Thanks everybody for the responses. I think I will just forget about it and bottle as normal this weekend.