Secondary - beer versus wine

Hi all,

I'm a novice beer-maker but have been doing wine for a couple years. When I pass fermented juice (wine) to a carboy, oxygen is a big concern. We top up to the neck if possible. Some people try to keep a layer of Argon gas to ward off O2 if there's too much headspace. I was wondering about beer in the secondary following fermentation. Is there the same concern?

One of the vendors in the winemaking forums has a new device. He primarily sells a vacuum pump system for bottling and transferring wine. I have his system and use it also for beer bottling (works great). He has a new device to address purging the O2 from the headspace in carboys. You need a vacuum pump and his device is a special bung with a 1-way valve for vacuuming and another hole where he attaches a vacuum indicator bulb. Take a look here and let me know if this would be helpful in beer making.

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49529

Thanks,
Mark

I don't think there's *as much" concern, but you do want to minimize headspace as much as possible. I have never capped off a carboy or bucket with Co2, just hasn't been necessary since the beer will creating Co2 at some rate anyway. You do want to try to minimize any oxidation with beer, just as you do with wine.

There's a major difference between wine and beer where with wine, you really want to purge every bit of Co2 from solution and therefore there's little left to fill out any headspace. With beer, that isn't done and so the Co2 can fill out any headspace slowly but surely...and even then, typically at the end, we add even more Co2 back into solution for carbonation.

Most beers you can skip the secondary and just bottle or keg after fermentation is done.

Sailingeric said:

Most beers you can skip the secondary and just bottle or keg after fermentation is done.

Click to expand...

This.
And your concern about oxidation is part of the reason many brewers skip the secondary.

ncbrewer said:

This.
And your concern about oxidation is part of the reason many brewers skip the secondary.

Click to expand...

that and its usually consumed in the following weeks... unlike wine.