How Much Oxygen = Oxidation ?

I have been lucky and careful as far as oxidation goes.
But I still wonder, just how much oxygen will cause it.

A few bubbles when auto siphon racking?

A little splashing?

I mean, it seems like it takes a LOT to oxygenate that wort prior to pitching. So would it stand that you would REALLY have to splash, bubble, etc to introduce enough oxygen to cause a problem?

It takes a lot of splashing to do any damage, 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 an 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...

That doesn't mean you want to dump your carboy into the bottling bucket, or do other careless things. You still want to be gentle when moving your beer from vessel to vessel.

BUT it does mean that if we spalsh, or have to use our autosiphon to pump our beer is something goes wrong, that we need to panic about it.

I've had all sorts of problems, like bottling a blond ale with peaches in it,that kept jamming the bottling wand and auto siphon, and the beer's still turned out just fine.

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

Great reply, Rev. I am indeed very careful and its good to know that small mistakes are nothing to worry about.

It can happen though. I just finished off my Irish red ale I brewed in December. Definitely oxidized, and judges in competition picked it up too. Took 7 months to show up, but it's there, papery-cardboard thing going on.

smizak said:

...Took 7 months to show up, but it's there, papery-cardboard thing going on.

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I think I addressed that here;

Revvy said:

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

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That's probably a time you'd want to invest in Oxygen absorbing caps. Though I've opened 2 year old homebrew and NOT detected any. So even age isn't a given all the time.

Good handling and bottle sealing is important, but yes, it takes a long time to show up, and is expected in some styles due to their aging.

Most of us will not notice oxidation due to drinking our beer too soon. That podcast basically dispelled HSA as a non-concern, but that is where they mentioned that proper handling after fermentation and oxidation were much bigger concerns, and not that hard to prevent anyway.

Some people fill a bottle, then give it a quick shake to make it foam. The foam drives out the O2. They then cap on the foam to basically eliminate any real amount of O2 from the bottle. from then on, you are relying on the cap seal to keep out the oxidation.

Revvy said:

That's probably a time you'd want to invest in Oxygen absorbing caps. Though I've opened 2 year old homebrew and NOT detected any. So even age isn't a given all the time.

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I use those too. It's beer, and even more so obviously, process dependent. I'm not sure why the Irish red oxidized, but I have a 2 yr. old porter that has zero oxidation character. I brewed a N. English Brown that is older than the Irish red and it just placed in the NYS Fair. I doubt it's oxidized. But for some reason the Irish ale did. I'm convinced that there is something in dark roasted malts that combats oxidation.

I agree with you though, O2 caps and careful racking and you'll rarely see oxidation.

jalgayer said:

I mean, it seems like it takes a LOT to oxygenate that wort prior to pitching. So would it stand that you would REALLY have to splash, bubble, etc to introduce enough oxygen to cause a problem?

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Yes and no

The yeast use the oxygen during fermentation, but any oxygen aftwerwards given enough time will cause problems. I had a BW that got oxidized but it took a couple years to show up. Whats funny is most people didn't notice it but I did along with a couple other HB`s, its one of those things that once you tasted it you can spot it really easy.

If your drinking your beer fast enough and not saving for extended amounts of time alittle splashing won't be noticed.

another poster>
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/so-what-does-oxidation-taste-like-181799/index2.html#post2106180

Revvy said:

It takes a lot of splashing to do any damage, 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 an entire one of our red oxygen bottle/airstones into our beer AFTER fermentation is complete.

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Your full of it and have yet to show your proof of that statement, we've been over this before.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/purging-secondary-156065/#post1799277

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