Carbon Dioxide Barrier

[Sudz]

I was considering flooding my bottling bucket with CO2 to displace the air prior to racking the secondary. It seems to me filling the bucket with CO2 would prevent the brew from contacting air during bottling. One could shoot some in each bottle and also insure little if no air would be present after capping.

Has anyone tried this? Any benefit in doing so?

 

[devaspawn]

I'm sure that it could have it's benefits but for me, I wouldn't find the extra work worth the little benefit that I theorize that you'd get out of it. In the carboy the liquid will push most of the air out and then the CO2 should keep the oxygen away from the wort. Mere contact with air for such a short time isn't likely to cause any damage.

The same sorta goes for bottles as well. Also, what little oxygen that is in the headspace will be comsumed by the yeast when eating the priming sugar.

 

[Revvy]

Yeah...it's really a lot of effort for something that will happen automatically when fermentation starts.

Don't fear the beer so much...it actually takes a lot of oxygen to "ruin" your beer...and the normal things we do when we brew, racking, hydro readings, siphoning, bottling...and even most "normal" accidents that happen when we brew, isn't really enough.

 

[Sudz]

Thanks guys... I surely don't need more things to keep track of at this juncture...

 

[fratermus]

A meadmaking cow-orker is paranoid about O2 during racking, so we made a little CO2 pump to flood his carboys.

Leftover treetop plastic jug with water and a chunk of dry ice in it, stoppered with a blowoff tube. Let the CO2 fill the container and rack.

I don't know that it makes a difference but it's easy enough since the corner store sells dry ice cheap. Even easier for folks with CO2 rigs.

 

[Revvy]

I think it was in the listener's mail section of Basicbrewig radio this week, that someone wrote about a similar issue, and Jim, kinda laughed and said the same thing that it is going overboard...

People who are paranoid about oxydation need to realize that if you are not setting your beer aside for a long aging, then you will probably have drunk all your beer long before any cardoard tastes would develope. Oxydation issues are not something that develop immediately....Most of my drinking beers are gone in a couple of months, and sometimes less depending on my pipeline, or how much I like it...For example my Deadguy clone tends to get drunk quite quickly, because I like it so much. Even if I have four or five different beers sitting in my fridge , I end up going for it the most...I could probably dump my entire O2 bottle into it at bottling time, and never notice if it's been oxydized...it just won't be around long enough for me to find out.

It doesn't mean you abuse your beer....It just means you don't worry about it, especially if you make a little mistake or something.