Purging a Secondary

[radamadar]

Hey... I've read quite a few threads on here and did some searching, but didn't come across anything that quite answers this one.

I've heard of using dry ice to purge oxygen from secondaries, some people have carbon dioxide readily available from their kegging setups (and some just secondary in their kegs apparently), but has anybody tried the small pressure cartridge driven setups they sell in wine preservation kits?

I have one of these and some argon cartridges... they're probably a little small to purge the whole carboy pre-rack, but do we think there's much benefit in purging the remaining headspace right before sticking the airlock on? (yes, I know we'd prefer to fill right to the neck!) Any sanitation concerns? My gut says no harm here, but questionable benefit.

 

[Revvy]

You haven't come up with much on here, because, quite frankly it's not really necessary and most folks don't have a setup to do so. Besides the CO2 already present in the primary and the beer, the forms a protective layer, is going to be taken over to the seondary. Since things are siphoned so that they rise up in the vessel they are being put in, from the bottom to the top, actually the natural co2 present purges, or pushes out any o2 ahead of it.

But who knows, maybe someone will come along to help. Good luck.

 

[Houblon]

3 easy steps







I normally have starsan inside and pump the carboy with co2, dump starsan and the foam left behind is full of CO2.
Beer goes in and pushes out the foam, seal carboy and its done.

 

[Hermit]

OK. What am I missing here? You purge the empty secondary? I drop in a few carb tablets to make sure there is a little CO2 production to purge the head space, but why purge the empty?

 

[Houblon]

So the beer doesn't pickup any oxygen during the transfer to the empty carboy, geeky/overkill? maybe but I would rather take a few steps to protect the beer after all the time-money-care spent in making it.


BYO wizard wrote about using dry ice to the same effect.


I do the same when filling kegs, along with `burping the keg a few times

 

[Revvy]

So the beer doesn't pickup any oxygen during the transfer to the empty carboy, geeky/overkill? maybe but I would rather take a few steps to protect the beer after all the time-money-care spent in making it.


BYO wizard wrote about using dry ice to the same effect.


I do the same when filling kegs, along with `burping the keg a few times

Yeah, but you have to admit it IS overkill.

It takes a lot of splashing and other things to do any damage to our beer, someone on basic brewing years ago, (Palmer, or Chris Colby of BYO) said that in order to truly provide enough O2 to oxydize our beers it would take pumping and entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.

Most of the splashing intentional or accidental that we do in the course of our brewing will not harm it...Including pumping with your auto siphon...

So I wouldn't worry, if people want to do it more power to them, BUT like I said earlier few people have the means or the inclination, and it is really pretty much done automatically when you move a beer blanketed by co2 and it fills the secondary or even bottles from the bottom to the top. The co2 pushed up and pushes the 02 our ahead of the beer.

Read this to see what we've managed to do and our beer still mananged to turno out okay; Our beer is hardier than most folks believe.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

And beside Oxygenation damage isn't immediate anyway, most of us would have our beer drunk long before it would happen.

 

[Hermit]

Yeah, but you have to admit it IS overkill.

It takes a lot of splashing and other things to do any damage to our beer, someone on basic brewing years ago, (Palmer, or Chris Colby of BYO) said that in order to truly provide enough O2 to oxydize our beers it would take pumping and entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.

Most of the splashing intentional or accidental that we do in the course of our brewing will not harm it...Including pumping with your auto siphon...

So I wouldn't worry, if people want to do it more power to them, BUT like I said earlier few people have the means or the inclination, and it is really pretty much done automatically when you move a beer blanketed by co2 and it fills the secondary or even bottles from the bottom to the top. The co2 pushed up and pushes the 02 our ahead of the beer.

Read this to see what we've managed to do and our beer still mananged to turno out okay; Our beer is hardier than most folks believe.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

And beside Oxygenation damage isn't immediate anyway, most of us would have our beer drunk long before it would happen.

Beer wouldn't have been around nearly as long as it has if all of these things were really necessary. Maybe the monks really did need divine intervention to succeed.

 

[Houblon]

Yeah, but you have to admit it IS overkill.

------
And beside Oxygenation damage isn't immediate anyway, most of us would have our beer drunk long before it would happen.

geeky/overkill? maybe but I would rather take a few steps to protect the beer after all the time-money-care spent in making it.
.

I even said its overkill myself but stand by whats posted. Already have a tank of gas and it takes all of 1-2mins but now the beer at no point comes into contact with Oxygen.

It only takes a few weeks to darken beer and I do keep alot beer for years and would like to know they won't taste like wet paper when I serve them.

The comment about

(Palmer, or Chris Colby of BYO) said that in order to truly provide enough O2 to oxydize our beers it would take pumping and entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.

is so full of crap. If that was true why worry about splashing.......yeah thought so.
----------------------------
page 32 BYO sept.2005

"if you have a kegging system,you may also want to fill receiving vessels with CO2 before racking beer into them."

page 16 BYO oct.2006

Topic: Secondary motions>
I get concerned about oxidation and will use methods to remove oxygen from the vessel I am going into...
-
I recently learned that many winemakers use pelletized dry to do the same thing.....

 

[Revvy]

The comment about is so full of crap. If that was true why worry about splashing.......yeah thought so.

Well, many of us DON'T worry about splashing, or hot side aeration, or autolysis, or whatever other boogeymen keep new brewers up at night.

It really IS hard to ruin your beer, if you take proper precautions, it doesn't mean you have to go crazy and not care, what it means is you don't have to crap your pants every time you make a mistakes.

Or absolutely THINK you have to go to these extremes to make beer. More power to you if you want to, but plenty of GREAT beer is made by just doing the basic stuff, and not sweating it to this extreme.

 

[Hermit]

Well, many of us DON'T worry about splashing, or hot side aeration, or autolysis, or whatever other boogeymen keep new brewers up at night.

It really IS hard to ruin your beer, if you take proper precautions, it doesn't mean you have to go crazy and not care, what it means is you don't have to crap your pants every time you make a mistakes.

Or absolutely THINK you have to go to these extremes to make beer. More power to you if you want to, but plenty of GREAT beer is made by just doing the basic stuff, and not sweating it to this extreme.

The danger of some of this stuff is that it can scare people off from ever starting. Nothing wrong in obsessing if you want to and have the capability. I see this all the time on a telescope making list I am on. They see posts of guys with a life times worth of experience, or even NASA folks, arguing some fine points and just feel they are NEVER going to be able to make a telescope. Same here. We even have the equivalent of RAHAHB. "Grind more, worry less".

But, isn't there always a but? Before putting too much into what Palmer and Jamil have to say, listen their broadcast on hot side aeration. They have some guy from "Great Beer Institute" or whatever on. When he says what they want to hear, they are all ears. Otherwise, it is like a 'man says, dog hears' cartoon. Specifically when they talk about wort aeration. The guy from "GBI" kind of tries to gently tell them they are going overboard on that subject when Jamil insists that you have to use a sterile in line filter if you want to use air to oxygenate the wort. In another show Jamil is clinging to his magic O2 stone to oxygenate the wort because he doesn't want to use air because it will use up the 'one shot' head forming proteins? WTF? How many guys "whip the snot" out of their wort and get massive blow offs without any problems with the head on their beer?

 

[Revvy]

The danger of some of this stuff is that it can scare people off from ever starting. Nothing wrong in obsessing if you want to and have the capability. I see this all the time on a telescope making list I am on. They see posts of guys with a life times worth of experience, or even NASA folks, arguing some fine points and just feel they are NEVER going to be able to make a telescope. Same here. We even have the equivalent of RAHAHB. "Grind more, worry less".

But, isn't there always a but? Before putting too much into what Palmer and Jamil have to say, listen their broadcast on hot side aeration. They have some guy from "Great Beer Institute" or whatever on. When he says what they want to hear, they are all ears. Otherwise, it is like a 'man says, dog hears' cartoon. Specifically when they talk about wort aeration. The guy from "GBI" kind of tries to gently tell them they are going overboard on that subject when Jamil insists that you have to use a sterile in line filter if you want to use air to oxygenate the wort. In another show Jamil is clinging to his magic O2 stone to oxygenate the wort because he doesn't want to use air because it will use up the 'one shot' head forming proteins? WTF? How many guys "whip the snot" out of their wort and get massive blow offs without any problems with the head on their beer?

+1,000,000,000,000

That's what I am getting at. Sometimes the wanking on the podcasts can get waaaay to "out there." And some folks can't make the distinction between opinion and fact.

And freak a lot of new folks out.

The bottom line is that beer has been made since long before the internets, and even looooooooonnnnnnnggggggg before germ theory. Beer has been made for millenia even before anyone understood germ theory, that even just the basic fact that we have indoor water, clean our living spaces and ourselves regularly and have closed waste systems, and a roof over our heads, that we are lightyears ahead of our ancestor brewers.

And despite the doomsayers who say that ancient beer was consumed young because it would go bad, they forget the fact that most of those beers were usually HOPLESS, and that the biggest reason hops were placed in beers was for it's antisceptic/preservative function.

So even if the beer had to be consumed young, it still must have tasted good enough to those folks most of the time to survive culturally for 4,000 years, and not go the way of pepsi clear or new coke. I'm sure even a few hundred or thousands of years ago, people were discerning enough to know if something tasted good or nasty...

Go take a look at my photo walkthrough of Labatt's first "pioneer" brewery from the 1840's https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/labatt-pioneer-brewery-128740/

Wood fermenters, open cooling pans, open doors, cracks in the logs and beams letting air in, and not one bottle of starsan in sight.

The way I figure even just having some soap and water, basic 21st century hygiene, and a basic understanding of germ theory trumps how it was done from Gilgamesh's time through Louis Pasteure's....

In most places we don't have to even worry about boiling our water before drinking it.

Best advice I have for new brewers, If you brew from fear, you won't make great beer!

You might make drinkable beer, or you might make crap...but until you realize that your beer is much hardier than you think it is, you will find that this is much more enjoyable of a hobby.

And you learn to KISS.....

 

[Bob]

Well said, Revvy.

It is possible - nay, probable - to brew excellent beer without the technological advances made in the past 300 years. I ought to know; I've done it - no thermometers, hydrometers, etc. That said, it takes experience and effort to re-learn lost techniques.

The techniques and technology developed in the past 300 years, including wort aeration, articificial carbonation, filtering, etc., were developed by commercial brewers. All the techologies have one aim: Consistency in a salable product.

Most of the technological advances that plague worry-wart homebrewers - like HSA, oxidation, etc. - are those of interest to commercial brewers of light lager beer. It's much easier to induce HSA off-flavors in 500bbl batches of light lager than it is five gallons of Porter; the problem is a combination of fluid mechanics, volume, and a style where flaws have nowhere to hide.

For oxygenation of bitter wort, there is a consistent body of science which says that it is impossible to oversaturate bitter wort with oxygen; dependent on the gravity and viscosity of the wort, only so much oxygen can be dissolved therein, certainly not more than the yeast will metabolize during the aerobic phase of their life cycle.

I've never heard of this worry about protein loss through oxygenation; that's complete bunk.

If you have a persistent worry about oxidation due to transfer, you have two options:

1. Don't transfer.
2. Purge the receiving vessel with CO2.

Purging is easy, uses very little CO2, and can permit you to rest more easily at night. If you insist on doing it, all you need to do is allow CO2 from your tank to run into the bottom of your clean, sanitized, empty carboy at ~5psi for a few seconds. CO2 is heavier than air, so it will displace ambient air quickly. As there is no air in the carboy, there is no chance oxidation can occur through splashing.

RDWHAHB!

Bob

 

[garycan157]

So I am a newb and am on my second batch. This is still the biggest thing that confuses me.

We are using a ale pale for the primary and a carboy for the secondary. In the primary during fermentation, the co2 obviously pushes out the o2. But when we take off the lid after the primary and siphon the beer into the carboy for secondary, oxygen is reintroduced into the carboy and the co2 at the top of the beer in the primary is free to escape. So once the beer is in the secondary, do we just not worry about the oxygen in the head space? Is it not a big deal or do we need to somehow purge it? We let the beer sit in the primary for a week and in the secondary for two weeks. I just dont want our beer to get spoiled.

I wouldnt have even thought it was an issue at all, except I am brewing with someone else at his house and we are kegging our beer and I wanted to put some beer into a 2L to take some home with me and some people on the forum were making an issue out of oxygen getting into the 2L once I open it to drink a beer and how it once I open the 2L, I have to drink it right away or it will go bad.

Any insight from you guys would be great.

 

[Hermit]

So I am a newb and am on my second batch. This is still the biggest thing that confuses me.

We are using a ale pale for the primary and a carboy for the secondary. In the primary during fermentation, the co2 obviously pushes out the o2. But when we take off the lid after the primary and siphon the beer into the carboy for secondary, oxygen is reintroduced into the carboy and the co2 at the top of the beer in the primary is free to escape. So once the beer is in the secondary, do we just not worry about the oxygen in the head space? Is it not a big deal or do we need to somehow purge it? We let the beer sit in the primary for a week and in the secondary for two weeks. I just dont want our beer to get spoiled.

I wouldnt have even thought it was an issue at all, except I am brewing with someone else at his house and we are kegging our beer and I wanted to put some beer into a 2L to take some home with me and some people on the forum were making an issue out of oxygen getting into the 2L once I open it to drink a beer and how it once I open the 2L, I have to drink it right away or it will go bad.

Any insight from you guys would be great.

You want minimum head space in the carboy. There are a few things you can do depending on how much space is left. If there is little, you may/probably? get enough CO2 escaping out of the beer you are racking to provide some protection. Revvy has made a case as to why oxidation is not a concern for the home brewer. You have to REALLY try and oxygenate the wort to have it make a difference according to what he has posted. You can have a little boiled water that has cooled off to take up head space. You could even have a little sugar in the water as you boil it. That would make the yeast produce some CO2. I drop in a few carbonation drops myself. But for the most part, you really don't have to worry if there is very little head space.

 

[Bob]

We are using a ale pale for the primary and a carboy for the secondary. In the primary during fermentation, the co2 obviously pushes out the o2. But when we take off the lid after the primary and siphon the beer into the carboy for secondary, oxygen is reintroduced into the carboy and the co2 at the top of the beer in the primary is free to escape. So once the beer is in the secondary, do we just not worry about the oxygen in the head space? Is it not a big deal or do we need to somehow purge it? We let the beer sit in the primary for a week and in the secondary for two weeks. I just dont want our beer to get spoiled.

I wouldnt have even thought it was an issue at all, except I am brewing with someone else at his house and we are kegging our beer and I wanted to put some beer into a 2L to take some home with me and some people on the forum were making an issue out of oxygen getting into the 2L once I open it to drink a beer and how it once I open the 2L, I have to drink it right away or it will go bad.

Any insight from you guys would be great.

Don't worry about it. The miniscule amount of air in your carboy will not have a negative impact on your beer. It certainly won't get spoiled.

Speaking of spoiled, in your second paragraph you're confusing "spoiled" or "going bad" with "going flat". The people making an issue out of the oxygen were either mistaken or confused you. Here's why:

You know, having consumed beer before, that once you crack open a beer's container it'll start to go flat. Whether the container is an aluminum can or half-gallon growler, it'll go flat once you break the seal (ahhh, that satisfying "pshht" sound!). Even if you open the 2L bottle, quickly pour a glass, and tightly reseal the bottle, the top-pressure was released. That top-pressure keeps the fizz in the beer. You've replaced some beer with air, too; CO2 will devolve from the beer into that air, even in a sealed container, because CO2 does not want to stay dissolved in beer, or any other fluid - it wants to bubble out.

That's why they tell you to drink beer in a large, resealable container "quickly": after 24-48 hours, it'll be flat. And flat beer is nasty.

You dig?

Bob