bottling question why use a bottling wand?

MrFancyPlants said:

I've had better luck bottling from a keg faucet into tipped bottles(swing tops) and cranking up the carb (a little) so that the foam purges the headspace in the bottle. I did have some cardboard flavored bottles from a bottling wand prior to getting a keg that I attribute to the air let in by the mass of the wand being removed from the bottle after filling. The headspace looked just right but tasted like cardboard.

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I doubt the bottling wand being removed is causing oxygenation, otherwise every single bottler that uses bottling wands would be getting wet cardboard beers. If that was happening when you were bottling theres bound to be more obvious sources of oxygen making its way in (the agitation of bottling beer is enough to knock out some CO2 thats in solution in your beer so that should be pushing at least a little bit of that oxygen out before you clamp a cap on).

Annecdotal data: I have a handful of different beer styles that over 12+ months old and none of them have the wet cardboard tastes (I have had several other people from homebrew club taste these and seemed very surprised they did not detect wet cardboard in a bottle conditioned beer thats more than a year old). Currently I think everyone accepts that there will be a small amount of oxygen getting into your bottles and if you bottle condition the yeast quickly munch down on any oxygen that managed to find its way in.