Keeping beer separate from oxygen

[WeHeavy]

I saw a show that explored the history of oil and it's impact on our lives. In part of the show it talked about in the early days oil storage tanks would explode because static would ignite the built up volatile gases inside the tanks. The solution was to make the roofs of the tanks float up and down with the oil volume thus eliminating the volatile gases.

So I'm thinking why can't that same thing be done when racking and bottling beer. Have a disk that fits inside a bucket that could easily be sanitized and a racking hose can be fitted to the center of the disk. The disk floats up and down with the beer blocking off air contact.

Problem I have is what to use. I'm thinkin Styrofoam would be hard to sanitize because it looks porous and would need a hard plastic smooth coating.

Any ideas on what could be used?

 

[RPh_Guy]

The main issue is from oxygen in the headspace of the bottles, not from air contact during transfer.

 

[GPP33]

The LODO guys do this during the mash, haven't seen anyone use one for transfers but that doesn't mean it can't be done or wont be beneficial. You can get all kinds of plastics in sheet form that you would need to cut to size. I'd be worried about the risk of contamination, whether or not that risk outweighs the benefits of less surface contact with the air is up to you.

I keg so I don't have to worry about O2 with racking/priming/bottling. If I was to bottle a batch though I'd liquid purge the keg, add the priming solution through the liquid post using a small funnel, do a closed transfer, roll it around for a while to make sure it's well mixed, then use CO2 to push the beer into bottles. Kegs and 5lb CO2 tanks can be had for pretty cheap, even if you don't serve from kegs they could still be used to simplify the bottling process with regards to O2 free racking and lower stress bottling days since you could easily start/stop throughout the day. There was also a post here a few days ago where the guy pruged the head space in his bottles before capping which appeared to make a significant difference, at least in the color of the beer.