• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

How easy is it to oxidize your keg?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

trevorc13

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 5, 2010
Messages
411
Location
Milwaukee
So I made probably my best batch of beer and kegged it about a month ago. I wanted to bottle a couple to enter into competition. I bottled yesterday and found that the beer had a slightly off flavor. Hard to describe but I thought it may be an oxidized flavor. A couple times prior to bottling I opened up the keg to see the level of the beer left. When I repressurized it I forgot to bleed out any oxygen that may have entered. I'm afraid that with all of the moving of the keg to get it bottled (which I attempted over the course of the last week) that any oxygen got mixed into the beer. Would you think this beer got oxidized or does it take a lot more O2 to oxydize? How long does it take to oxidize beer? Days, months, immediately???
 
Yep you opened it up and let all the goodie out.
Once the beer is in the keg and under CO2 your beer is good to go, as long as you don't open it or purge all your CO2 out your beer will be fine for along time.
It's sealed up snug under a blanket of CO2 safe and sound......

Oh and here is a tip when you rack your beer into the keg, before you rack, hook your empty keg up to the CO2 for a few minutes. Then vent and open the keg, you'll have a nice blanket of CO2 resting in the bottom of the keg, as you rack your beer into the keg it will force the CO2 up and push out any oxygen out of the keg, reducing the amount of O2 your exposing your beer to.
 
Also to check the level in the keg just weigh it. If you know the weight of the keg empty, just subtract from the actual weight. I'm sure beer is close enough to water so you will know what 1 gallon weighs.
 
Also to check the level in the keg just weigh it. If you know the weight of the keg empty, just subtract from the actual weight. I'm sure beer is close enough to water so you will know what 1 gallon weighs.

Great idea...I never thought of that. I have a volume strip on the side that you're supposed to wipe hot water over, but the thing sucks. I'll weigh it out and note the liquid weight, and use this from now on. Thanks for the suggestion. This beer definitely lost what it used to have. I'll dump the rest, being near the end anyways, and fill it with the new beer from my primary. I hate learning lessons the hard way.
 
trevor - are you lowering the pressure (or bleeding the pressure off the keg) to serve? that might be your problem....

weighing the keg will work, however, moving the keg around may also stir up sediment so keep that in mind.
 
Also to check the level in the keg just weigh it. If you know the weight of the keg empty, just subtract from the actual weight. I'm sure beer is close enough to water so you will know what 1 gallon weighs.

That is a great idea! I have a little travel scale that you use to lift up your luggage that will be perfect for this!

My ball locks (bought from different places) each weigh exactly 11lbs empty.

Edit: looks like somewhere around 8.33 lbs / gal for water; if finished beer has a gravity of 1.010 then it would only be 1% heavier than water.
 
Back
Top