Am I worrying for no reason?

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Houdini

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Ok, I was fermenting an extract brew that says to dry hop in a secondary after 2 weeks in the primary. I've never secondary fermented before and didn't have any 5 gallon carboys, so I decided to just rack to another 6.5 gallon bucket. The next day I noticed that I lost a gallon of brew due to a small leak in the spicket on the bucket I used. :(

So I re-racked to the original bucket that I had cleaned up the previous day. At this point I started to get real nervous about oxidation. Since I only racked to the secondary after fermentation was complete there shouldn't be any more CO2 being released that would buffer the beer against the oxygen, and after racking twice it's been exposed more-so than it should have been. At that point I decided to just add my dry hops then instead of waiting another week as it would have required popping the top and exposing it to even more oxygen. So now I'm going to just let it sit in the secondary for 2 weeks instead of 3 like I was originally planning, as I don't want the hops to start giving off odd flavors if left in too long.

Someone please tell me to RDWHAHB as I'm starting to go crazy wondering if my beer will be completely oxidized and taste off...

Update: BTW, I have decided from now on to simply dry-hop in the primary as the existing CO2 will buffer against the oxygen "let in" from opening the top...

- Houdini
 
RELAX. Nothing you can do about it. You'll still have tasty, dry-hopped beer. Is your process optimal? No. Is it ruined? Of course not. It'll be great. Best not to worry about it and do it better next time.
There's always something that could've gone better, but you forget all of that with your first sip of finished homebrew :)
 
A secondary doesn't mean it HAS to be a carboy. A secondary is just a SECOND vessel of any type, so your second bucket is (was) a secondary. The main point of moving to secondary to dry hop is just getting the beer off the yeast cake. This is important if you are going to dry hop for an extended period of time, or if you are using leaf hops and just chunking them in there, BUT if you are putting a few ounces of hops into a hop bag and dry hopping for a few weeks or less, you can just go ahead and do it in the primary without issue.

Anyway, racking a few times isn't going to give you oxidation issues, but it does suck that you lost a gallon to the spigot fail!
 
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