Secondary aging - what minimum headspace

All is in the title. A picture would be fine!

I have sours that are about 1 cm away from the bung, all the way into the neck.

As little as possible.

You add water when needed?

Here is my brew. How bad it is?

That is a blowoff tube, it's sanitizer not water. Yours looks fine, you shouldn't have to worry about a blowoff for secondary though. You want as little as possible, there shouldn't be any real activity.

Meh. My sours have significant headspace. But they are covered with newsworthy pellicles.

I was worried about oxydation. Not blowing off ;-)

Is that ok?

Anyone oxidation risk or not?

No oxidation risk - there's a layer of CO2 sitting on top of the beer thanks to the yeast.

aangel said:

No oxidation risk - there's a layer of CO2 sitting on top of the beer thanks to the yeast.

Click to expand...

Depends on when he racked it. He is asking about secondary, so if fermentation was compete before racking, then not as much CO2 as you imply. Although some does get knocked out of solution from the physical act of transferring the beer.

Probably Ok unless you are either aging for more than a couple of months or the beer was completely done and outgassing very little.

I try to hit the spot in the carboy where the angle starts to shallow out, about an inch higher liquid level than what you are showing. Once you get to that point there is actually not much headspace left (and very little exposed surface area). Normal outgassing would pretty much purge whats left.

Some people put ballast in their carboys (lead free marbles or stainless steel hardware) to take up headspace.

You could purge it with a little CO2 to get the oxygen out of the headspace.

@j1n

@j1n

J1n knows about it...

J1n knows. He's smart.