Remove Oxygen From Carboy

Hey All -

I read somewhere that there are times when you should purge the oxygen from the carboy.

Can anyone help me with "when" this is needed to be done and "how" this is done?

Thanks

Pretty much once fermentation is complete you want to limit the exposure of the beer to oxygen. So if you are transferring to a secondary carboy that could be where you heard that. It is very difficult for the homebrewer to completely "purge" oxygen from a carboy. You can however reduce the amount of oxygen in your carboy before you transfer your beer.

If I am going to a secondary for whatever reason I have a "working" bottle of co2 that I use to push beer during transfer, drive my beer gun, and also to flood secondary carboys and kegs with co2 when transferring. I just place the gas hose into the carboy and run co2 at 5 psi or so into the carboy for maybe 5 or 10 seconds. Then I run the transfer hose for the beer to the bottom of the carby so even if it splashes a bit at the start of the flow it should be mostly in a co2 environment. I do the same to my keg when I move beer to a keg.

The whole co2 thing is not absolutely necessary to do, it is just one more step you can do that helps the beer over time.

Dude, relax. Don't worry. Have a home brew.

One thing you can do is not rack from a primary to a secondary. During primary the yeat are giving off a bunch of CO2, so your primary doens' really have much O2 init anyway. If you skip skip secondary and just leave the beer inprimary another week, you are done. If you want to bulk age a big beer some and leave the batch in primary for like six months or so, that's cool too.

Racking a beer into a carboy from the plastic bucket after 7 days is a way for the LHBS to sell a glass carboy to an unsuspecting n00b. I suggest you pony up the extra ten bucks and buy your first corny instead.

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