Airspace in the secondary

I just moved my English Brown Ale to a 5 gallon glass carboy. There is a large amount of space between the top of the carboy and the beer- maybe 1/4 to 1/2 gallon's worth. I guess I lost alot in the trub? What can I do? (A wine making friend suggested santized marbles to drop in, to raise the level of the liquid, but I don't have anything like that here.). Will this hurt my beer?

If you have CO2, you can purge it. Otherwise I hope that your yeast is still active and can produce CO2 and/or consume the O2 that gets into the beer. Try shaking the carboy to release CO2 from the beer, which then purges the head space a little.

Kai

Will this hurt my beer?

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i am assuming you mean will the headspace cause your beer to produce an off taste.

headspace is one of those topics you'll see ppl square off about. some swear that the head space will produce <insert off taste here>. others like me, couldn't be bothered with such talk. I'll have to say that no one including myself has tasted one of my beers and spit it out all the while yelling about how the headspace tainted the beer. maybe my taste buds are a bunch of philistines.

kaiser recommends shaking the carboy. i would do that gently. splashing after the wort has fermented will produce off flavors and i can taste that.

IMHO, you really have nothing to worry about.

I'm agreeing with brewhead personally. If you watch your airlock while in the carboy I'm sure it will burp on occasion even while in the secondary. O2 is lighter than CO2 so that's what will be pushed out 1st.

Personally, I wouldn't shake it about as all that is going to do is aerate the wort with the newly exposed to oxygen on the surface if you shook aggresively. The racking process jostled it about enough to awaken any yeast if they have work left to do. I've used a 6g as a secondary and no problems. It probably had 1.25g worth of headspace.

Also, racking will release some CO2 to fill the head space. Don't worry about it.

Great info- thanks so much! Now it's just a matter of patience!

Lorena

All we need is just a little patience
(inhale) Patience...
Ooh, oh, yeah
All we need is just a little patience
yeeeeaaaah yeaaah yeah

<does the axl sway dance>

Yup, don't worry, relax, and have a home brew.

The yeast should be active enough to purge the 02 out of the carboy.

HeHe, "MarbleBrau".....mmmmmm...