Aeration during rackingissue?

hlmbrwng · Mar 14, 2016

Hi everyone. It's been an exciting adventure brewing the latest batch. Sooo glad it is finally bottled. Had to work out lots of kinks along the way, but learned a lot. I am only left with one fearoxidation.

I bottled on Saturday. The beer was fermenting on cacao nibs. I had an issue with a cacao nib getting stuck in the racking cane. The result was really weak pressure after the stuck nib. The tubing was not full of beer. Instead there was about 8 or so inches of air at the point where the racking cane met the tubing. The beer was slowly streaming down through this space. Is this enough to cause oxidation issues?

Additionally, as i was trying to fix that problem, I had to let go of the tubing (I was holding the tubing in place to ensure it was below the beer in the collection bucket). That caused the tube to raise up out of the beer that had already collected. This caused lots of air bubbles to run up through the tubing toward the racking cane.

So, my concern here is oxidation. Is a little oxygen fine when bottling? Will the yeast use this oxygen when fermenting the priming sugar?

Revvy · Mar 14, 2016

One thing that new brewers seem to forget, an I talk about it here, https://beerandbrewing.com/VPXjrioAAKiibhKp/article/have-faith-in-your-beer, is that accidents are going to happen....we're human, and that is sort of factored into the "resiliancy" of beer.

Lots of us have racked and had bubbles duing racking, and our beers have turned out fine, I've had occasions where I've had to pump the autosiphon to move the beer along, and STILL the beer tasted great after.

It's not like you dumped your entire 5 gallon batch from the fermenter 3 feet up into the bottling bucket... so might have got a little more oxygen in that you would have liked...But...

there's some arguments that a little o2 is still gobbled up by the yeast that is about to carb your beer, and you'll never notice.

OR at the worst a few months down the line, you MIGHT notice a carboard taste in your last bottles of beer...but being this is your first batch it's probably doubtful your beer will be around long enout that you'd ever notice IF it was too much...

Had you dumped your fermenter in the bucket you might have notice sooner than later, but that's not what you did...

Bottom line, RDWHAHB...

LLBeanJ · Mar 14, 2016

I agree with Revvy. Don't sweat it.

unionrdr · Mar 14, 2016

Were you bottling with a racking cane and bottling wand? Or just a racking cane & tubing?

hlmbrwng · Mar 14, 2016

unionrdr said:
Were you bottling with a racking cane and bottling wand? Or just a racking cane & tubing?

I used the racking cane and tubing to transport the beer into the bucket containing the priming sugar. From there I used tubing, connected to the spigot, and cheap plastic bottle filler.

McKnuckle · Mar 14, 2016

I can't tell you the number of times I've had these exact minor issues occur during racking. Stubborn auto-siphons that need extra pumping, air pockets in the tubing causing a slow flow, and momentary risings-of-the-cane-above-the-liquid have been commonplace. And none of them have ever produced any noticeable flaws in the final product.

I'm of the belief that oxidation is most concerning where a large surface area of beer is exposed relative to the total volume. The teeny amount of O2 in that tubing bubble won't harm your 5 gallons of beer, even if every molecule of it is absorbed. Luckily, O2 molecules don't reproduce like yeast - if they did we'd have a big problem!