How harmful is it - really - if you "oxidize" the beer at bottling?

I've just was helping 2 friends bottle 3 batches at once and with 3 people who knew how to brew this was only about 3 hours for everything. However, one thing that seemed to make it faster for them is they got all the beer splashing around and would stir the sugar in a lot with tons of foam being created.

I've always been paranoid about oxidization, but they didn't seem concerned and have been doing it this way for decades. How slow do you siphon? Thoughts?

oxidation will give the beer a wet carboard taste.

try to siphon as gentle as possible.

foam at bottling time is not good.

And, Oxidation can be a slow to occur process.

Maybe your friends throw caution to the wind because the beer does not stay in the bottle long enough for them to know what wet cardboard really taste like.

Or,

They actually like the character. Sortof like the intentional skunking of Corona. It is perceived not as a flaw but as a component of THAT brewers product.

Just cause they've been doing it a long time doesn't meant their beer has tasted good. This is not good practice and should not be done. That being said, Oxidation will take some time and a decent palate to become noticeable. If their pounding there beers within a couple-few weeks of bottling day they may not be noticing. Or they don't realize what they're tasting is not suppose to be what they should tasting and are happy with the off taste.

Gently pour your priming solution into the bottling bucket, then gently rack the beer onto it with your racking tubing all the way down a coiled a bit on the bottom of the bucket, this will create a very gentle swirling that will adequately mix the solution evenly into all the beer and "stir" itself. Without splashing.

It takes a lot of splashing to do any damage, someone on basic brewing years ago, (Palmer, or Chris Colby of BYO) said that in order to truly provide enough O2 to oxydize our beers it would take pumping an entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.

Most of the splashing intentional or accidental that we do in the course of our brewing will not harm it...

That doesn't mean you want to dump your carboy into the bottling bucket, or do other careless things. You still want to be gentle when moving your beer from vessel to vessel.

BUT it does mean that if we spalsh, or have to use our autosiphon to pump our beer is something goes wrong, that we don't need to panic about it.

I've had all sorts of problems, like bottling a blond ale with peaches in it,that kept jamming the bottling wand and auto siphon, and the beer's still turned out just fine.

And beside Oxygenation damage isn't immediate anyway, most of us would have our beer drunk long before it would happen.
I had some major f-ups with bottling on occasion and still haven't oxydized a batch.

I would just rdwhahb

Totally - I mean, I agree with you guys on the process but I've had many of their beers over time and not once has anything resembling wet cardboard come across my palate. They do improvised session brews that consistently turn out delicious. I was just wondering because they seemed quite surprised when I brought up what it seems on here goes as conventional wisdom - to siphon as gently as possible.

FiddleTilDeath said:

Totally - I mean, I agree with you guys on the process but I've had many of their beers over time and not once has anything resembling wet cardboard come across my palate. They do improvised session brews that consistently turn out delicious. I was just wondering because they seemed quite surprised when I brought up what it seems on here goes as conventional wisdom - to siphon as gently as possible.

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But that really goes to show just how hard it is to **** this up. Our beer is hardier than most folks realize, it constantly survies no matter what bone headed things we do.

That's why I collect these stories. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/ to help the newbs to learn not to panic.

FiddleTilDeath said:

I've always been paranoid about oxidization, but they didn't seem concerned and have been doing it this way for decades. How slow do you siphon? Thoughts?

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I siphon pretty slowly and try not to aerate the beer too much, but keep in mind that when you add bottling sugar you're going to restart fermentation, and the yeast will tend to use up any free oxygen and convert it to CO2 anyway. Lots of headspace can be a problem though (i.e. partial fills) because the yeast may not be able to metabolize all the O2 in that space.

billvon said:

I siphon pretty slowly and try not to aerate the beer too much, but keep in mind that when you add bottling sugar you're going to restart fermentation, and the yeast will tend to use up any free oxygen and convert it to CO2 anyway.

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That is a really good point that never occured to me. I'll be sure to pass that on in future threads like this.

This was a timely post. I just bottled a batch last weekend and because of an excessive amount of hop gunk (due to my own carelessness) I pretty much had to run my beer through a makeshift filter to clear it up. It splashed a lot at the time, but it's good to know that if I drink it relatively soon I might at least salvage the batch.

I helped a friend bottle awhile back and he just uses the valve on the bottling bucket without a bottling wand. He just dumps it in. I was shocked, but the beer doesn't taste like cardboard. He lost a couple of bottles during a move and we found them last week, no oxidation after 3 months. Yeast is an amazing thing.

I don't condone this behavior though, it is messy.

HometownHoosier said:

I helped a friend bottle awhile back and he just uses the valve on the bottling bucket without a bottling wand. He just dumps it in. I was shocked, but the beer doesn't taste like cardboard. He lost a couple of bottles during a move and we found them last week, no oxidation after 3 months. Yeast is an amazing thing.

I don't condone this behavior though, it is messy.

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This WOULD worry me, and I don't condone it eitherl.

HometownHoosier said:

I helped a friend bottle awhile back and he just uses the valve on the bottling bucket without a bottling wand. He just dumps it in.

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This behavior was observed today as well... I swear they make great beer though and not only that they were the first people I ever knew who homebrewed - definitely an inspiration to start. Today was the first day we did any actual brewing related activities together beyond tasting! World of difference in strategies but fookn A, we just bottled 3 batches in 3 hours!

That said, not gunna make me start siphoning any differently.

It's worth being a bit cautious at bottling time, IMHO. A lot of people don't recognize oxidized flavor until you point it out to them, and in my experience judging in the past, it was by far the most common flaw in beers. I've tried some local homebrew in the last 6 months or so, and most of it was oxidized. I'm hyper sensitive to it, and HATE that character. I talked to the brewers about it a lot and we think it's from their bottling technique (they didn't have bottling wands and were bottling with just a siphon hose and not getting it to the bottom of the bottle).

Anyway, for my 2 cents, you don't need to go crazy over it, but trying to minimize aeration during bottling is a good idea.

MattHollingsworth said:

It's worth being a bit cautious at bottling time, IMHO. A lot of people don't recognize oxidized flavor until you point it out to them, and in my experience judging in the past, it was by far the most common flaw in beers. I've tried some local homebrew in the last 6 months or so, and most of it was oxidized. I'm hyper sensitive to it, and HATE that character. I talked to the brewers about it a lot and we think it's from their bottling technique (they didn't have bottling wands and were bottling with just a siphon hose and not getting it to the bottom of the bottle).

Anyway, for my 2 cents, you don't need to go crazy over it, but trying to minimize aeration during bottling is a good idea.

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This is also what I have learned, I used to rack the beer in the bottling bucket and splash the priming solution in and not worry a whole lot about splashing. I had an IPA and Cali Common judged and both exhibited oxidation. I was unable to refrigerate the bottles after they became carbonated, so I know them being in a 80 degree closet for 2 months played a role too. So now I just stay on the safe side and don't splash at all.

I was also told on here that it does take awhile to develop that palate of being able to detect oxidation, wet cardboard is a good description but doesn't hit the nail on the head, I think I am able to detect it when it is bad, and it is very off-putting.

MattHollingsworth said:

A lot of people don't recognize oxidized flavor until you point it out to them, and in my experience judging in the past, it was by far the most common flaw in beers.

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+1,000,000

People just don't recognize it. It jumps out at me as well. It's not just the cardboard flavor/aroma, it's a stale, sweetish flavor as well, hard to explain without sitting down with an example.

Revvy said:

That is a really good point that never occured to me. I'll be sure to pass that on in future threads like this.

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I question how much O2 the refermentation would use up, especially if you really managed to pick up a lot during bottling, but I have no scientific evidence. And I do think that it's hard to really screw up that bad. But I can tell you from personal experience that it's not impossible.

smizak said:

+1,000,000

People just don't recognize it. It jumps out at me as well. It's not just the cardboard flavor/aroma, it's a stale, sweetish flavor as well, hard to explain without sitting down with an example.

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Exactly. I think it's one of those things that makes it good to enter competitions too. People can learn from their scoresheet notes. I've encountered a lot of homebrewers in my life who had been making homebrew for their little group of friends and just didn't know their beer was oxidized. If you hang out with other homebrewers, though, one of them will eventually tell you your beer's oxidized (if it is). Once you learn that character and recognize it, it's easy to pick out. Sitting down and drinking some beer that is known to be oxidized is a good way to learn it.

I've only oxidized one batch and that was the first time I kegged and did not purge the headspace. I naturally carbed that keg and the fermentation obviously did not consume that oxygen.

And I'm as big or bigger of a RDWHAHB guy as the next person not giving a care to HSA. But I'm not going to go ape and splash my fermented beer around in the bottling bucket or just dump it into a keg when I see no benefit to saving the time it takes to siphon.

As someone else pointed out the oxidation flavor doesn't develop overnight. I've always been cautious to avoid. I'm one of these "odd" brewers that will throw a 6 pack in the corner to let it age to see how it tastes in a year. So, oxidation will really be present if you give it a head start by aerating it at bottling. Maybe they just drink it so fast it doesn't have time to really develop by why risk it.

Basically, oxidation is not a process that is undone with time, it gets worse. Aging an oxidized beer won't help it.

On two different occasions I infused what I thought were a massive amount of air bubbles into the finished beer while racking from primary to bottling bucket. I thought the beer was ruined. The beer turned out fantastic. I have learned since then to be extremely careful when transferring to different vessels. I also practice with water when I get a new piece of equipment I am not familiar with (new auto siphon) was the above mentioned culprit. So the moral of the story is be very cautious when transferring beer from one vessel to another. I think I just got lucky. J.