Oxygen Absorption crown shelf life?

I bottled my 1st meads (Vanilla New Year and Apricot New Year) tonight. I know, I KNOW, wrong forum but bear with me a sec.

So, I am pulling out my crowns in preparation for bottling ( I keep them in glass jars IDW, convenient I guess) and sorting out the "Oxygen Absorbing" crowns (considering that these will be in bottle mebe' a year before slurping down) and it re-occured to me that I have no idea what keeps the OA crowns "fresh".

That is, what keeps the "Oxygen Absorption" bits of the crown from getting spent in storage?

BTW, sampling the "extra" bits of mead that don't fill the bottles and they are a little hot but, very tastey. :cross:

I don't believe the chemical gets activated until it gets wet...

JVD_X said:

I don't believe the chemical gets activated until it gets wet...

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That's what the Brewing for Dummies book says.

2 years I have been brewing and it never occured to me that they are moisture activated. Dang. Ignorance is bliss.

It's a good thing I went to kegging early on. I suspect I have a handful or two of spent O2 caps. When I bottled I would toss handfuls of the caps into sanitizer and pluck them out 1 by 1 as I capped. Extra's got towel dried and tossed back into the supply.

Doh!

GilaMinumBeer said:

When I bottled I would toss handfuls of the caps into sanitizer and pluck them out 1 by 1 as I capped. Extra's got towel dried and tossed back into the supply.

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Exactly what I do too. Never occured to me they were moisture-activated.

I think the moisture just from the beer is probably sufficient to activate it. I wonder though if really high humidity can ruin them? I am guessing probably, I need to put a desiccant pack in with them stat.

I'm not convinced they make much difference in unfiltered beer. In theory, the yeast should take up oxygen in the head space; whether this occurs before or after the beer gets damaged is up for debate.

oops....usually i do the same and pluck them from the starsan......the ones i dont use i just dry off for next time....so your saying there dead at that point?