Oxidation Test

So,

This isn't some super serious clinical test, but on July 23rd I bottled an IPA. One of the beers I intentionally oxidized as it wasn't a full bottle and the bucket got some nice sucking noises as it was going in so I figure what the hell. Shook the crap out of it, took the cap off and let it sit awhile, rinse/repeat a few times.

Tonight I just cracked it and a control side-by-side and they taste pretty damn identical. I think I might pick up marginally stronger hop flavors in the normal one, but it's not a blind taste-test so I can't say for sure if that's true or just me imagining it.

I know oxygenation is generally more of a long term problem, so perhaps this 1.5mo test is meaningless, but I've never had an oxidized beer myself so I was curious as to how bad it could be. Anyways, maybe some of you worry-worts will be happy to know that oxidizing your beer is pretty hard if you're an alcoholic like myself and polish off a batch quickly.

I think next bottling session I'll do it to a full sixer, yknow... for science, and try it at 2mo intervals and see just how long it takes for the supposed wet cardboard magic.

For science! I like the sound of the experiment. I have only noticed it in two batches of mine, one of them being a stout where I think it becomes a little more apparent. It presents as a kind of metallic taste which is not so great. But, I brew 4 gallon batches, fairly low OG, and share quite a few with friends so they go pretty quickly.

This is funny, way back I belonged to a brewing club and we did a similar experiment and could not create this magical wet cardboard taste. We dd it warm, cool, cold, the works. Some stayed in the club fridge for half a dozen meetings (6 months).
Both open and blind tast tests revealed nada for oxidation.

Well I had a wheat beer bottled in pet screw cap containers that did not seal properly sitting for several months. Sherry! Completely undrinkable. Luckily for me only about 1/4 off the batch was bottled this way.

I did this as well: I intentionally tried to oxidize/infect a bunch of bottles of IPA by being careless/sloppy in controlled ways. The bottles I shook the crap out of tasted identical to the non-shaken bottles a month later. I also got zero effect from not cleaning and/or sanitizing certain bottles. This was blind taste-tested by three volunteers, none could distinguish any of the samples. The only one that was different was the bottle I left out in the sun for two weeks.

So, yeah, unless there are long-term storage plans, I don't worry much about oxidation anymore.

oljimmy said:

I did this as well: I intentionally tried to oxidize/infect a bunch of bottles of IPA by being careless/sloppy in controlled ways. The bottles I shook the crap out of tasted identical to the non-shaken bottles a month later. I also got zero effect from not cleaning and/or sanitizing certain bottles. This was blind taste-tested by three volunteers, none could distinguish any of the samples. The only one that was different was the bottle I left out in the sun for two weeks.

So, yeah, unless there are long-term storage plans, I don't worry much about oxidation anymore.

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Good to hear you had similar experiences. Seems like everything I try doesn't even make a difference anymore. Always good beer

iijakii said:

Good to hear you had similar experiences. Seems like everything I try doesn't even make a difference anymore. Always good beer

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What a terrible problem to have :cross:

I bottled two beers from a keg, same beer gun, same time, same bottle type and filled to the same level. (already carbonated). It was good going in (the "standard"). One bottle I purged with CO2, the other I did not. In the side by side comparison the non purged sample was oxidized in one week, the other was still good. Here are the symptoms that I experienced with the oxidized sample.
1. Much darker color.
2. Overly sweet.
3. Another off flavor, possibly could be described as wet cardboard?
4. Zero detectable hop flavor/aroma.
This was a highly hopped IPA. Maybe oxidation occurs more quickly in carbonated samples?

Man, in a week? That's interesting. I suppose it's possible the small amount of carbonation from my bottle priming helped scrub some oxygen out. Very surprised you had that happen with a beer gun.

brick_haus said:

I bottled two beers from a keg, same beer gun, same time, same bottle type and filled to the same level. (already carbonated). It was good going in (the "standard"). One bottle I purged with CO2, the other I did not. In the side by side comparison the non purged sample was oxidized in one week, the other was still good. Here are the symptoms that I experienced with the oxidized sample.
1. Much darker color.
2. Overly sweet.
3. Another off flavor, possibly could be described as wet cardboard?
4. Zero detectable hop flavor/aroma.
This was a highly hopped IPA. Maybe oxidation occurs more quickly in carbonated samples?

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Very weird, because I bottle with the BMBF and have let them sit for weeks before drinking. Always seem the same. I have never purged the bottle with CO2.

It should be noted that I don't keep IPAs around for weeks.

You only get oxidation problems when you're trying not to. Conversely, when you intentionally try to oxidize the beer, it won't oxidize.

Psylocide said:

Very weird, because I bottle with the BMBF and have let them sit for weeks before drinking. Always seem the same. I have never purged the bottle with CO2.

It should be noted that I don't keep IPAs around for weeks.

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Yea, I didn't do this experiment on purpose, it just happened (accidentally forgot to purge one of the two bottles). I cant explain why, just sharing my experience.

My IPA's don't last long either

brick_haus said:

I bottled two beers from a keg, same beer gun, same time, same bottle type and filled to the same level. (already carbonated). It was good going in (the "standard"). One bottle I purged with CO2, the other I did not. In the side by side comparison the non purged sample was oxidized in one week, the other was still good. Here are the symptoms that I experienced with the oxidized sample.
1. Much darker color.
2. Overly sweet.
3. Another off flavor, possibly could be described as wet cardboard?
4. Zero detectable hop flavor/aroma.
This was a highly hopped IPA. Maybe oxidation occurs more quickly in carbonated samples?

Click to expand...

This is really interesting: this is why I did my tests, I was having exactly those symptoms and couldn't figure out what was going on. I still have no idea. It's great that you were able to vary just that single variable, though I have to say it's still a mystery to me, because people use the non-CO2 Biermuncher's Bottle Filler and experience no issues at all.

I've had my last two IPA batches come out darker, overly sweet, zero hop aroma and another off flavor smell as well and can't figure it out. Maybe picked up something in my bottling process?

I just bottled a beer a couple of days ago so we'll see how that turns out. Tried to be super careful with it and hoping to not see these issues. It tasted really really good before bottling. But who knows if that'll really depict what it will taste like after carbed.

Also depends on the beer last night I took a gravity sample of my current IPA. Poor the sample I into a glass and refrigerated, tried a couple of hours later. There was a significant loss in body and hop flavour. It didn't taste card boardy but it did taste stale in a certain way.

Not trying to hijack your thread but I had another beer come out sweet.

Beware of long post...

Only after a week of conditioning I had to try a beer. I know it's super early but I had to. So I put one in the fridge on the seventh day and let it sit for two days. Attached is a picture of pre-bottled beer and post-bottled beer.

On first pour beer smelled pretty darn good and tasted pretty darn good. But that quickly faded to just a cloying sweetness after about 10 minutes. I'm still not sure what could be causing this.

Here's my recipe:
Batch Size: 2.5 gallons
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.006
ABV: 7%
IBU: 70
SRM: 6.1

3272 g 2 Row 92% 7.2 lbs
40 g Caramel 40 1.1% .08 lbs
40 g Caramel 10 1.1% .08 lbs
40 g Carapils 1.1% .08 lbs
50 g Corn Sugar 1.4%

Gypsum: 8.3 grams
Epsom Salt: .5 grams
Calcium Chloride: 1.9 grams
Lactic Acid: 1.2 mL
Estimated SRM: 5.0 via Bru’N
Estimated mash pH: 5.3

Ca: 128
Mg: 4
Na: 23
SO4: 275
Cl: 65

.25 oz Warrior 16.5 AA% FWH 31 IBU
.2 oz Simcoe 11.1 AA% 15 min 8 IBU
.4 oz Centennial 8.7 AA% 15 min 12 IBU
.4 oz Amarillo 8 AA% 15 min 11 IBU
.8 oz Simcoe 11.1 AA% 0 min steep for 30 min before cooling
1 oz Centennial 8.7 AA% 0 min steep for 30 min before cooling
1 oz Amarillo 8 AA% 0 min steep for 30 min before cooling
.6 oz Simcoe Dry Hop 2 days
.7 oz Centennial Dry Hop 2 days
.65 oz Amarillo Dry Hop 2 days
ALL HOPS USED WERE IN PELLET FORM
American Ale yeast slurry about 80 ml

A couple of things about the beer itself and a couple of things I did differently with this brew in hopes of it turning out great:
1. First off my OG: 1.06 and my FG: 1.011. So a little off but not bad. This could be some of the sweetness I get.
2. Almost 50% of my mash water I grabbed from my fridge filter that I drink my water from. Have never done that before.
3. Used a lot of gypsum to get sulfate super high. Not only do I like my IPAs to finish dry from a low mash but I wanted to try a high sulfate and see what that did.
4. Used the smallest amount of crystal malt I've ever used. And it still came out sweet. I'm thinking of getting rid of all crystal malt in my next brew and seeing how that goes.
5. Made sure I had a nice rolling boil while wort was in the kettle instead of a vigorous one. To hopefully help with milliard reaction and browning of wort.
6. Bought new tubing for my auto-siphon.
7. After filling bottles with bottle wand, I laid a cap on top of them while I filled the rest and capped all beer once I was done.

I am bottle conditioning in my house which during this time is staying between 74*-79*. With all that being said the beer loses hop aroma and flavor quickly and turns cloying.

We do have chloramine in our water so maybe next brew I'll try all distilled or RO water and try to go from there. Even though I won't really know how to build my water profile from those. I do not have any campden tablets for the chloramine in the mash. Maybe I can find some ASAP.

Any suggestions or ideas?

When I bottle I fill the first bottle until the air is gone from the hose and bottle filler. I add the last little bit of beer from after siphon starts glugging. I mark the cap on that one and drink it first. Since I never drink just one it’s easy to do an A/B comparison.

Oxidation at a low level eats out the more subtle flavors such as hops and esters. Paper and cardboard come much later. Sherry after that.

All beer has oxygen in it. There is enough oxygen in the headspace of a bottle to get the sherry flavor we so often find in barleywine. It just takes a long time. If you want to speed up the reaction agitate the bottle to put air into solution.

The oxygen in the head-space is very slow to diffuse into the beer. Once the oxygen is in the beer it reacts out in a week or two.

It's probably due to the live yeast, they do a good job of protecting from oxidation and reducing any trans-2-nonenal already present.

Careful: that a beer tastes sweet-ish after 10 minutes isn't necessarily oxidized. All beers lose those sharp, bold notes after 7-8 minutes in the glass. Make sure you're not being paranoid.

The weird sweetness/lack of bitterness problem I had went away after I changed up my bottling wands and oxy-cleaned the hell out of my bottling bucket. I currently think it was some kind of minor infection. If I were mass-bottling again I would skip the bucket entirely, rack straight into bottles, add Cooper's drops and cap. Less plastic crap for the fermented wort to pass through = less risk.

oljimmy said:

Careful: that a beer tastes sweet-ish after 10 minutes isn't necessarily oxidized. All beers lose those sharp, bold notes after 7-8 minutes in the glass. Make sure you're not being paranoid.

The weird sweetness/lack of bitterness problem I had went away after I changed up my bottling wands and oxy-cleaned the hell out of my bottling bucket. I currently think it was some kind of minor infection. If I were mass-bottling again I would skip the bucket entirely, rack straight into bottles, add Cooper's drops and cap. Less plastic crap for the fermented wort to pass through = less risk.

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What exactly did you do to clean the crap out of your stuff? I clean with oxyclean free and feel I give a very thorough cleaning. Wiping down everything and scrubbing for a minute or two, running the oxyclean water through the spigot.

It probably is an infection since the OP said it's literally impossible to oxidize a beer. I might just have to switch everything out.