Did I aerate while racking to my keg?

[FVillatoro]

Hello mates,

So I have a 1/2 Auto Siphon and I removed the hose to replace with with a 1/2 inner-diameter silicone hose (I can boil it to sanitize it).
When i put it on the racking cane I noticed that it fit right in and a little snug, I campled it down and I then noticed that the actual cane inner diameter looked quite smaller than the actual 1/2 hose.

I went got it, I pumped it and I was able to get a siphon going, but I noticed that the beer was not filling the space of the hose like on the old one, and that made feel uneasy.

I purged the bottom of the keg with co2 like always, and I had the other end of the siphon below the beer at all times.

It's a schwarbier, and i was going to lager it 6 weeks - but now I'm not sure.

I did notice that there was some brown foam ontop of the beer this time... probably co2 out of solution.

What do you guys think? Maybe it'll go stale?

Thanks!

 

[friarsmith]

Possibly, but if you purged your keg well after filling, it should be ok. If you're worried about any O2 in solution that didn't get purged immediately post-fill, perhaps put the keg under 10-15 PSI for a day or so, then re-purge. That should do the trick. That's what I do for long term keg storage for barleywines.

 

[FVillatoro]

I purged the keg a about 10 to 13 times like usual, and placed in my keezer. I just purged it again this morning. There shouldn't be a huge volume of air in the cane and tube to oxidize an entire 5 gallon batch... Would there? Plus there would have been co2 getting knocked out of solutions too. 🤔
Thanks for the reply 👍

 

[mongoose33]

I purged the keg a about 10 to 13 times like usual, and placed in my keezer. I just purged it again this morning. There shouldn't be a huge volume of air in the cane and tube to oxidize an entire 5 gallon batch... Would there? Plus there would have been co2 getting knocked out of solutions too. 🤔
Thanks for the reply 👍

That's what I would think--you just aren't exposing the beer to a lot of oxygen. Some, but not a lot.

I now rack directly to keg "out" post into a keg full of CO2, but before I started doing that I filled a keg full of air. That would be at least as much exposure as yours, if not a lot more, and I didn't have any problems.

 

[FVillatoro]

That's what I would think--you just aren't exposing the beer to a lot of oxygen. Some, but not a lot.

I now rack directly to keg "out" post into a keg full of CO2, but before I started doing that I filled a keg full of air. That would be at least as much exposure as yours, if not a lot more, and I didn't have any problems.

Now I connect the gas post on for a few minutes so that the co2 can settle on the bottom and lift any oxygen that's on there in hopes that the racked beer is always in the co2 and not exposed.
So far I haven't had a stale beer yet (we'll see how this one turns out lol).

I'll go back to using the tube that came with the auto siphon for now until I find the correct inner diameter (5/16 maybe vs 1/2?) silicone tubing.

Thanks again fellas! Hope you all have a great weekend.

 

[mongoose33]

I've read that gases don't stratify like that--what you're probably doing is simply lowering the percentage of O2 in the mix, which is a good thing, but it's not going to settle out like that.

What I do (didn't invent this--read it on HBT) is fill the keg with Star San and use CO2 to push it out into either another keg or a 5-gallon bucket. The CO2 almost completely replaces the Star San, except for a little air which is in the headspace of the keg. Then I fill it via the OUT post so the beer fills from the bottom. Works pretty slickly.

 

[doug293cz]

Now I connect the gas post on for a few minutes so that the co2 can settle on the bottom and lift any oxygen that's on there in hopes that the racked beer is always in the co2 and not exposed.
So far I haven't had a stale beer yet (we'll see how this one turns out lol).

I'll go back to using the tube that came with the auto siphon for now until I find the correct inner diameter (5/16 maybe vs 1/2?) silicone tubing.

Thanks again fellas! Hope you all have a great weekend.

I've read that gases don't stratify like that--what you're probably doing is simply lowering the percentage of O2 in the mix, which is a good thing, but it's not going to settle out like that.

What I do (didn't invent this--read it on HBT) is fill the keg with Star San and use CO2 to push it out into either another keg or a 5-gallon bucket. The CO2 almost completely replaces the Star San, except for a little air which is in the headspace of the keg. Then I fill it via the OUT post so the beer fills from the bottom. Works pretty slickly.

@mongoose33 is correct. Not only don't gases spontaneously stratify, they do the opposite and spontaneously homogenize due to diffusion. Watch the video. Br2 is more than 3.6 times heavier than CO2 (159.8 vs. 44 mol wt.), but it homogenizes with air in about 30 minutes. CO2 will homogenize even faster (like the NO2 later in the video.)

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oLPBnhOCjM[/ame]

Brew on