Did I oxidize my beer?

So my friend and I did my 2nd all grain batch yesterday and we wound up with about 6 gallons of wort instead of the 5 we were shooting for. It had an OG of 1.070, so I was pretty sure we were gonna need a blow off tube. I set up a blow off tube, but it was sort of a make shift one, and the lid to my fermenter kept popping open because not enough CO2 was escaping through the tube. This is about 12 hours after we pitched the yeast. So I got another bucket and airlock from a friend to ferment in and racked about 3 gallons into the new sanitized bucket, closed it up, and put on the new airlock. I tried to rack it as gently as possible. What are the chances that I oxidized the wort?

Slim. I've done my share of splashing and such during racking, never noticed anything resembling oxidation. At this stage, you've got nothing to worry about. In the first few days, there's plenty of CO2 being produced anyway, so the yeast are metabolizing any oxygen in solution. Adding a bit by racking won't hurt. You're at a bigger risk for contamination, but that's a slim chance as well with such solid yeast activity.

As long as there is live yeast in the wort/beer, oxidation is unlikely. The yeast will use the oxygen to make more yeast.

I've added oxygen to fermenting wort as often as three times for a big barleywine.

Excellent, thanks! I was a little worried, but it seems to be doing fine and I guess there's no point in worrying until I can actually taste it and see if it did or not. Thanks again, for the help.

Sorry, the phrasing was a little confusing. I left 3 gallons in the other bucket too. So I've got 2 buckets, each with about 3 gallons in them. That way there would be enough room in the top of each bucket that the krausen wouldn't clog up the airlocks. I'm thinking about doing a little experiment and keeping the two separate for the rest of fermentation and dry hopping each with different hops. So maybe something interesting will come out of the whole situation.

unionrdr said:

In a 6.5 gallon bucket,that's 3.5 gallons of head space. Could be a touch much head space to keep full of co2...

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i've done it a bunch, shouldnt be any issues

unionrdr said:

In a 6.5 gallon bucket,that's 3.5 gallons of head space. Could be a touch much head space to keep full of co2...

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It may not stay "full" of CO2, but whatever is in there will sink and form a "blanket" of sorts over the beer. This will obviously get stirred up if there's a lot of agitation to the air in the headspace, but if it's covered over it should allay any fears, though I don't even think it's worth worrying about.

When in doubt, just consider all the people who do open fermentation.

Co2 pooling is a fairly rare atmospheric phenomenon - i really doubt that co2 in the headspace sinks. I'm betting it stays in mixture with the rest of the atmospheric gasses.

Co2 rising slowly out of the beer may sit low on the surface, though

TimpanogosSlim said:

Co2 pooling is a fairly rare atmospheric phenomenon - i really doubt that co2 in the headspace sinks. I'm betting it stays in mixture with the rest of the atmospheric gasses.

Co2 rising slowly out of the beer may sit low on the surface, though

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I actually just now read a thread from a few months ago about all this. No real consensus other than that we shouldn't worry about incidental oxidation if we're reasonably prudent. (Exceedingly long primaries or aging are a slightly different story.)

www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/protective-co2-blanket-303980/