Limiting oxidation: effect of purging headspace O2 in a bottle conditioned IPA

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At least part of that O2 will react with the residual antioxidant, I guess.

The hard core LODO folks take pains to tweak the amounts of antioxidants added, so as to "run out" at about the time they oxygenate the wort. And because it's virtually impossible to nail that exactly, they measure the DO as they are oxygenating. So if O2 is still being scavenged, they add more O2. OTOH, if the antioxidants "ran out" too soon, they add less O2. So the DO measurement course corrects and helps them tweak further for next time.
 
Correct. The late boil addition is to provide protection from O2 being absorbed by the wort during chill, whirlpool and transfer to the fermenter.

Also correct about oxygenation, but the German brewers' protocol is to pitch the yeast, then oxygenate. In reaching their conclusions about efficacy of the process, they reported some negative side effects from the late dosing possibly interfering with start of fermentation and prolonged adaptive phase due to the lack of oxygen in the wort. The solution was to reduce the amount of the late dosing relative to the initial mash dosing, and pitch the yeast before oxygenation of the wort.

That way the yeast have an immediate exposure to the oxygen they want and need, and are less competitive with the Trifecta for D.O. The yeast get all the O2 they initially need and scavenge virtually all the D.O. from from the wort. Once fermentation has begun the yeast no longer need additional O2 but will consume any that infiltrates into the fermenting beer. The excess (now expended) Trifecta falls out of suspension and any sulphurous compounds are expended and exhausted with the CO2 through the blowoff tube or airlock.
 
The hard core LODO folks take pains to tweak the amounts of antioxidants added, so as to "run out" at about the time they oxygenate the wort. And because it's virtually impossible to nail that exactly, they measure the DO as they are oxygenating. So if O2 is still being scavenged, they add more O2. OTOH, if the antioxidants "ran out" too soon, they add less O2. So the DO measurement course corrects and helps them tweak further for next time.
Yeah, I'm not that hard core, mostly because I don't have a D.O. meter. Maybe some day, but for now my guesstimating works reasonably well.
 
This (relative) side discussion on " Trifecta" seems very worthy of it's own thread. It looks like it would complement (rather than replace) the various efforts to improve bottling techniques. If so, then the strength is that individuals can adopt each approach as their time / interests allow.
+1
 
Presently on the road without access to my notes or brewlogs, but basically I treat the strike water (approx. 34 liters) with 1.8 grams of Trifecta blend of BrewTan B, NaMeta and ascorbic acid) followed up with 1.4 grams just before flame out in the boil. I'll dig up the exact amounts of each to achieve the desired parts per million in the wort when I get back home.

Basically, less can be more, but the documented results the German brewers were getting of residual dissolved O2 were eye-watering. I'll add that the clarity of wort going into the fermenter after whirlpooling and setting is nothing short of amazing.

This method is geared towards eliminating DO on the hot side, but won't do much (or anything on the cold side). The flameout addition could potentially be negative since you want to aerate the wort after cooling, which could be inhibited by that addition. However, if you're doing aggressive whirlpooling, it may have a positive effect since that is still a good time to reduce DO.

I don't see any reason why that couldn't be used together with the cold side reduction method. I use Kmeta in the strike water for chloramine, but I think the amount I use likely also reduces DO there as well. However, I'm admittedly less stringent about oxidation on the hot side
 
This method is geared towards eliminating DO on the hot side, but won't do much (or anything on the cold side). The flameout addition could potentially be negative since you want to aerate the wort after cooling, which could be inhibited by that addition. However, if you're doing aggressive whirlpooling, it may have a positive effect since that is still a good time to reduce DO.

I don't see any reason why that couldn't be used together with the cold side reduction method. I use Kmeta in the strike water for chloramine, but I think the amount I use likely also reduces DO there as well. However, I'm admittedly less stringent about oxidation on the hot side
I think any oxidation, whether hot side or cold side, is equally detrimental and needs to be minimized. With regards to sulfite additions negatively impacting the cold side, the key is pitching a large and healthy yeast volume and oxygenating the wort after pitching. Active yeast will scavenge all the D.O., and any sulphurous byproducts will be expelled through the blow-off. Solids will precipitate and aid in clarification.
 
I think any oxidation, whether hot side or cold side, is equally detrimental and needs to be minimized. With regards to sulfite additions negatively impacting the cold side, the key is pitching a large and healthy yeast volume and oxygenating the wort after pitching. Active yeast will scavenge all the D.O., and any sulphurous byproducts will be expelled through the blow-off. Solids will precipitate and aid in clarification.
This is not the proper place to be discussing hot side oxidation. We have the LoDO forum for that. Let's stay on topic with controlling oxidation when bottling.

doug293cz
HBT Moderator
 
@Taket_al_Tauro

Reading through this Limiting Oxidation conversation has been a real odyssey. If you are still bottling, do you still purge the headspace? If you still use ascorbic acid, do you still add AA at the rate of 1g per gallon?
 
@Taket_al_Tauro

Reading through this Limiting Oxidation conversation has been a real odyssey. If you are still bottling, do you still purge the headspace? If you still use ascorbic acid, do you still add AA at the rate of 1g per gallon?

Yes I'm still bottling. I must preface that I use these tricks only on my really hop forward beers, such as NEIPAs, and I'm not brewing such beers very often (in fact I'm not breweing very often in general, unfortunately). I'm brewing these kind of styles less than once a year on average, so I did not have much opportunity nor motivation to experiment further.
So I'm still doing both the headspace purging and the ascorbic acid. It is just for having maximum insurance when I am throwing a lot of money in hops into a batch of NEIPA.
However, by now I have good reasons to believe that the AA alone would probably be sufficient, especially if you combine it with reducing, or even minimizing the headspace.
I personally do not like the technique of absolute minimum headspace, such as 0.5 cm, because you can easily overdo it in some bottles and risk that the beer will push out the cap, or worse, make the bottle explode.
I usually leave 1.5 - 2 cm of headspace. It is still a big reduction when compared to a "standard" headspace you would leave when simply removing the bottle wand and leaving it as it is.

Regarding the dosage of AA. I reduced a bit in my last batch to try and stay within the maximum legal limit that someone mentioned in this thread, which is 15 g/hl in the EU (if I remember correctly). That would roughly correspond to 0.6 g/gallon. It seems to work just as fine as the higher 1 g/gallon dosage.

Finally, I am not sure if even the AA is really necessary. I still believe that active yeast is your best antioxidant. I believe (but that is really more kind of a gut feeling thing) that the AA may help especially with shelf life in these styles. If you want the beer to still taste bright and hoppy after a few months, I believe the AA does help here.
 
Yes I'm still bottling. I must preface that I use these tricks only on my really hop forward beers, such as NEIPAs, and I'm not brewing such beers very often (in fact I'm not breweing very often in general, unfortunately). I'm brewing these kind of styles less than once a year on average, so I did not have much opportunity nor motivation to experiment further.
So I'm still doing both the headspace purging and the ascorbic acid. It is just for having maximum insurance when I am throwing a lot of money in hops into a batch of NEIPA.
However, by now I have good reasons to believe that the AA alone would probably be sufficient, especially if you combine it with reducing, or even minimizing the headspace.
I personally do not like the technique of absolute minimum headspace, such as 0.5 cm, because you can easily overdo it in some bottles and risk that the beer will push out the cap, or worse, make the bottle explode.
I usually leave 1.5 - 2 cm of headspace. It is still a big reduction when compared to a "standard" headspace you would leave when simply removing the bottle wand and leaving it as it is.

Regarding the dosage of AA. I reduced a bit in my last batch to try and stay within the maximum legal limit that someone mentioned in this thread, which is 15 g/hl in the EU (if I remember correctly). That would roughly correspond to 0.6 g/gallon. It seems to work just as fine as the higher 1 g/gallon dosage.

Finally, I am not sure if even the AA is really necessary. I still believe that active yeast is your best antioxidant. I believe (but that is really more kind of a gut feeling thing) that the AA may help especially with shelf life in these styles. If you want the beer to still taste bright and hoppy after a few months, I believe the AA does help here.
All correct but one thing. Active yeast is the best antioxidant but it cannot reach the oxygen in the air in the head space. Once the yeast is not active any more, there's still a lot of oxygen on the headspace air and this oxygen continuous to dissolve into the liquid. So from the point on that the yeast is done with the carbonation sugar, the remaining oxygen from the headspace starts to do damage. That's why it's so important to limit the headspace as much as practically possible, without the risk of bottle bombs.

I am using this method by default and it changed everything for me. My beers last and last .... From time to time I have a bottle within a batch that has a "normal" headspace and after a few weeks these bottles are clearly inferior to the rest.

You can also obviously mimic active yeast by using other antioxidants, like you are doing with the vitamin c. This way, the head space is less critical, as long as there is active antioxidant within the liquid remaining. Once that's used up, same story as with inactive yeast.
 
All correct but one thing. Active yeast is the best antioxidant but it cannot reach the oxygen in the air in the head space. Once the yeast is not active any more, there's still a lot of oxygen on the headspace air and this oxygen continuous to dissolve into the liquid. So from the point on that the yeast is done with the carbonation sugar, the remaining oxygen from the headspace starts to do damage. That's why it's so important to limit the headspace as much as practically possible, without the risk of bottle bombs.
Yes sure, that was the main point of my original post in this thread ;-). But thanks for bringing it again because it is indeed critical. And @thefigure5 is correct that reading through this thread has become an odyssey (for various reasons), and one can easily loose track of the most relevant information.
Just out of curiosity, do you observe the same dramatic differences between large headspace/reduced headspace also for styles that are not as hop forward?
 
Yes sure, that was the main point of my original post in this thread ;-). But thanks for bringing it again because it is indeed critical. And @thefigure5 is correct that reading through this thread has become an odyssey (for various reasons), and one can easily loose track of the most relevant information.
Just out of curiosity, do you observe the same dramatic differences between large headspace/reduced headspace also for styles that are not as hop forward?
I very rarely brew hop forward styles, so yes, the impact on an ordinary bitter is immense, same for stouts and lagers.

Thanks for bringing this up, your thread had a huge impact on my beer. The biggest actually since... I don't know since when, since a long time :D.
 
I very rarely brew hop forward styles, so yes, the impact on an ordinary bitter is immense, same for stouts and lagers.

Wow... wouldn't have thought for it to have such an impact in less hoppy styles. It's great to hear that it worked so well for you, but are you sure you did not improve also other parts of your process at the same time? ;-)
I just find it hard to believe it would have such a huge impact in something like a stout, for example.

Then again, it could well be...since starting this thread I try to leave a significantly smaller headspace in all my beers. But I do not go the extra length of purging and/or ascorbic acid for the non dry-hopped ones.
But that was also the time when I improved several other things in my process, such as better control over pH, and so on. So it's difficult to tell.
 
I very rarely brew hop forward styles, so yes, the impact on an ordinary bitter is immense, same for stouts and lagers.

Thanks for bringing this up, your thread had a huge impact on my beer. The biggest actually since... I don't know since when, since a long time :D.
I keg the majority of my beers. The beers that I bottle tend to be 2.5 gallon batches of Belgians and 1 gallon trial batches. Sometimes I get lazy with purging the headspace thinking it does not really matter that much outside of an NEIPA. Well..

I recently cracked open bottles of a Marris Otter + BRU-1 SMaSH beer that I split with Lutra, Voss, and US-05. The beers had been bottled about 6 weeks at that point and stored at room temp. In the picture below, you can clearly see visible signs of oxidation in the US-05 glass in the center. That beer tasted stale with notes of paper and muted hop flavors. This was a 3 gallon batch with 2.25 oz of hops total (0.75 oz at 10 min, 1.50 oz in a steep).

Does that mean that Lutra and Voss will eliminate oxidation when bottling? Despite them looking nice, they both had muted flavors. I did not get the nice grain character and bright BRU-1 hop character that I remember when the beers were fresh. They both reminded me of that "bland homebrew" taste.

This made me think I need to pay more attention to oxidation with every beer that I bottle. I guess I should have expected it with this batch, but I want to do more trials with beers like the Saisons and Dubbels that I often bottle without any steps to avoid oxygen in the bottle. Well, I do bottle directly from the fermenter adding sugar directly to the bottle, but I have been leaving the standard headspace from my bottling wand.

IMG_4209.JPG
 
The beers had been bottled about 6 weeks at that point and stored at room temp. In the picture below, you can clearly see visible signs of oxidation in the US-05 glass in the center.
Does that mean that Lutra and Voss will eliminate oxidation when bottling? Despite them looking nice, they both had muted flavors.
In my experience, evidence of oxidation did not necessarily make much difference in taste, and greater exposure to oxygen did not necessarily result in darkening. I was comparing batches that were or were not transferred to a secondary. Either way they were bottled with no concern for limiting oxygen. In the first picture oxidation is evident in the batch on the left that was put through a secondary. In the second picture, secondary batch on the left again, there was no darkening seen. The beer in the first picture was more highly hopped and used US05 yeast; the second was lower in hops and used Nottingham. In both cases the beers tasted much the same.
672231-278-279.png
682310-282-283-9-7.png

On a related note, these comparisons showed the darkening happening within two weeks. My beers are usually gone by six weeks in the bottle, but during these comparisons they were up to eight weeks in the bottle. We did not see further darkening as time went by from two to eight weeks.
 
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I keg the majority of my beers. The beers that I bottle tend to be 2.5 gallon batches of Belgians and 1 gallon trial batches. Sometimes I get lazy with purging the headspace thinking it does not really matter that much outside of an NEIPA. Well..

I recently cracked open bottles of a Marris Otter + BRU-1 SMaSH beer that I split with Lutra, Voss, and US-05. The beers had been bottled about 6 weeks at that point and stored at room temp. In the picture below, you can clearly see visible signs of oxidation in the US-05 glass in the center. That beer tasted stale with notes of paper and muted hop flavors. This was a 3 gallon batch with 2.25 oz of hops total (0.75 oz at 10 min, 1.50 oz in a steep).

Does that mean that Lutra and Voss will eliminate oxidation when bottling? Despite them looking nice, they both had muted flavors. I did not get the nice grain character and bright BRU-1 hop character that I remember when the beers were fresh. They both reminded me of that "bland homebrew" taste.

This made me think I need to pay more attention to oxidation with every beer that I bottle. I guess I should have expected it with this batch, but I want to do more trials with beers like the Saisons and Dubbels that I often bottle without any steps to avoid oxygen in the bottle. Well, I do bottle directly from the fermenter adding sugar directly to the bottle, but I have been leaving the standard headspace from my bottling wand.

View attachment 781668
I know what you mean with that bland homebrew taste. Had the same, was gone when the headspace was minimised. It is a bit spooky how long hop flavour stays now. :D
 
I've been following this thread for a long time. As a result of the suggestion for using Ascorbic acid, I did a comparison.

This photo was taken with a flash which makes them look more different than they actually are, but the results are easy to see in daylight.

This isn't a hop forward beer (it's a saison).
The one on the left is a control (no purge, no squeeze, just normal filling). The one on the right had 1/32th of a teaspoon of ascorbic acid put into the bottle at filling time (no premixing/dissolving, just fill directly on the AA).

These were bottled 5 months ago

IMG_20221015_112617.jpg
 
Thanks @agentgonzo ! The photos definitely show a difference in color.



Over in a different topic, I mentioned an anecdotal about craft beer aging much better when refrigerated (link). So I was looking for similar anecdotaslinvolving home brewed beer.

I'm slowly getting into dosing some individual bottles with ascorbic acid (AA), currently just checking to make sure I don't get any 'unexpected' flavors (so far, none). I was using a level-ish drop (1/64 tsp) rather than 1/32 tsp (smidgen) for those tests.

My next brew day is a classic IPA. I may create a special six-pack (no AA, a 'drop' of AA, a 'smidgen' of AA; room temp for three; chilled for three) and let it sit for three months.
 
Over in a different topic, I mentioned an anecdotal about craft beer aging much better when refrigerated (link).

IMO, any beer not destined for intentional aging should be refrigerated. The Arrhenius rule of thumb, i.e. that biological and chemical reactions tend to happen twice as fast for each 10C increase in temperature, seems to fit beer staling pretty well.
 
Thanks @agentgonzo ! The photos definitely show a difference in color.



Over in a different topic, I mentioned an anecdotal about craft beer aging much better when refrigerated (link). So I was looking for similar anecdotaslinvolving home brewed beer.

I'm slowly getting into dosing some individual bottles with ascorbic acid (AA), currently just checking to make sure I don't get any 'unexpected' flavors (so far, none). I was using a level-ish drop (1/64 tsp) rather than 1/32 tsp (smidgen) for those tests.

My next brew day is a classic IPA. I may create a special six-pack (no AA, a 'drop' of AA, a 'smidgen' of AA; room temp for three; chilled for three) and let it sit for three months.
Hey @BrewWKopperKat, I saw you over on the WTF am I doing wrong??!!! thread, but, until now, I missed the posts about putting ascorbic acid directly into the bottles. It is an interesting.

At 1/64 tsp/bottle and 4g AA/tsp., your dosage is very close to what @Taket_al_Tauro uses if your bottles are 12 ounce, a little less if you use pint bottles.

I did get some Private Preserve but as yet have only tried it with a porter. So far I can't tell any difference between the ones with and without the Private Preserve. I found the technique a bit messy and got some splashback even if not submerging the little plastic straw that came with the Private Preserve can. Probably I will get better with practice.

The technique of partially filling the bottle with the bottling wand and then filling it more - I find it hard to do.

I am committed to bottling and probably will try adding ascorbic acid somewhere in the process too, but I want to try Private Preserve by itself for a while first.
 
@thefigure5 : thanks for sharing some initial observations on Private Preserve.

IIRC, my AA dosage starting point was based on information in Vitamin C - The Game Changer? (Jan 2022). It's likely that that topic used information earlier in this topic.
@BrewnWKopperKat, thanks for mentioning the Vitamin C - The Game Changer? thread. I knew it was out there but hadn't read it in much detail until now, lost track of it. I want to try ascorbic acid sometime in the process.
 
I want to try ascorbic acid sometime in the process.
My previous 'experiments' were looking at short term effects of AA.

With 'traditional' bottling, one of my recent web searches lead to a couple of topics ( /1/, /2/ ) that recommend pairing AA and SMB. If/when I do a long term bottling 'experiment', I'll include this in the process.
 
My previous 'experiments' were looking at short term effects of AA.

With 'traditional' bottling, one of my recent web searches lead to a couple of topics ( /1/, /2/ ) that recommend pairing AA and SMB. If/when I do a long term bottling 'experiment', I'll include this in the process.

Those steps go a long way to mitigating O2 exposure. Two additional steps I take are to rinse each bottle with a weak NaSO4 solution and invert the bottles to drip drain just prior to filling. When I bottle, I use an EnolMatic vacuum bottling device that sucks the air out of the bottle while drawing wine from the aging car boy. It’s as close to O2 elimination as I can reasonably do, and it really helps prolong the wine in the bottle.
 
That is actually a really good contribution to this thread! How does this device work?
A pump draws a vacuum through a collection chamber in the bottler from a sealing nipple that fits in the bottle. A liquid feed line extends from the bottling nipple back to the liquid source (carboy). The vacuum draws liquid from the carboy to the filling nipple inserted in the bottle. The level of the fill (ulege) can be set, so that when that level is reached, the filling shuts of. The fill mechanism is released from the bottle, the bottle is placed onto a floor corker and the cork is rammed home.

Bottle filling takes about 10~12 seconds, insert a fresh empty bottle, cork the filled bottle while the empty one fills. Once I get the rhythm down I can fill 3~5 bottles per minute with very little O2 exposure.

It works well for still wine, but carbonated beer would foam uncontrollably since the vacuum draws about -1 BAR. The system isn’t truly O2 ‘free’ since the carboy void fills with ambient air as the volume of liquid falls. A perfect system would be one in which a constant supply of inert gas replaced the liquid being drawn from the carboy, but that’s why you dose with NaMeta to mitigate oxygen uptake.
 
I did get some Private Preserve but as yet have only tried it with a porter. So far I can't tell any difference between the ones with and without the Private Preserve.

I'd be very surprised if you find any differences between purged and unpurged in such a style as a porter. Then again, @Miraculix found benefits of purging (or rather high bottle fills, I believe) in styles I wouldn't have expected to see benefits... so you never know.
 
I'd be very surprised if you find any differences between purged and unpurged in such a style as a porter. Then again, @Miraculix found benefits of purging (or rather high bottle fills, I believe) in styles I wouldn't have expected to see benefits... so you never know.
It's always good to take oxygen out of the whole equation as much as possible. The easiest way is to fill up bottles as high as possible, without risking bottle bombs, which is usually 0.5cm below the rim. Plastic bottles can be squeezed so that there's no air inside at all when bottling.

Using gases have always the downside that they already mix with air when inserting, so there's always still oxygen inside the air space. Using the gas to create foam and then capping on foam solves this issue.
 
It's always good to take oxygen out of the whole equation as much as possible. The easiest way is to fill up bottles as high as possible, without risking bottle bombs, which is usually 0.5cm below the rim. Plastic bottles can be squeezed so that there's no air inside at all when bottling.

Using gases have always the downside that they already mix with air when inserting, so there's always still oxygen inside the air space. Using the gas to create foam and then capping on foam solves this issue.

Yes, my main strategy right now is also that of filling much higher than I originally used to, and this for every style I brew.
(Given that it is so easy to implement).
That said, I am not as courageous as you and I usually still leave about 1.5 to 2 cm of headspace.
I found 1 cm or below to be tricky: you are easily on the verge of too much with the small expansion of the liquid, which happens while conditioning.
You probably perfected your own method of high-throughput, high-precision home bottling :)
 
It's always good to take oxygen out of the whole equation as much as possible. The easiest way is to fill up bottles as high as possible, without risking bottle bombs, which is usually 0.5cm below the rim. Plastic bottles can be squeezed so that there's no air inside at all when bottling.

Using gases have always the downside that they already mix with air when inserting, so there's always still oxygen inside the air space. Using the gas to create foam and then capping on foam solves this issue.
+1 for “capping on the foam.”

Although the only times I ever bottle beer is for competitions and, rarely, for bottle exchanges, my process is to fill with a counter-pressure bottler and fill nearly to the top (¼” or so). When the fill line gets removed, the fill level (ulege) is just about perfect for long necks.

When the seal between the bottle top and the filler gasket is broken, there is a surge of foam that immediately gets capped. It helps to do this in a deep laundry sink or tub since you’ll loose a few ml of beer with each filling. The good news is that you’ll also loose most, if not all, of any O2 in the ulege. The foam displaces the air, and the CO2 coming out of solution provides the pressure cap that helps preserve the carbonation level.

Wash, rinse (literally) repeat. Works fine, lasts a long time. Messy but very efficient. Never a bottle bomb, assuming you didn’t over-carb your beer before bottling.
 
+1 for “capping on the foam.”

Although the only times I ever bottle beer is for competitions and, rarely, for bottle exchanges, my process is to fill with a counter-pressure bottler and fill nearly to the top (¼” or so). When the fill line gets removed, the fill level (ulege) is just about perfect for long necks.

When the seal between the bottle top and the filler gasket is broken, there is a surge of foam that immediately gets capped. It helps to do this in a deep laundry sink or tub since you’ll loose a few ml of beer with each filling. The good news is that you’ll also loose most, if not all, of any O2 in the ulege. The foam displaces the air, and the CO2 coming out of solution provides the pressure cap that helps preserve the carbonation level.

Wash, rinse (literally) repeat. Works fine, lasts a long time. Messy but very efficient. Never a bottle bomb, assuming you didn’t over-carb your beer before bottling.
That sounds pretty decent if one is using forced carbonation! And if you start getting paranoid, you can also add a few grains of sugar per bottle to make the yeast salvage whatever micro dose of oxygen might have gotten into your rig.
 
I'd be very surprised if you find any differences between purged and unpurged in such a style as a porter. Then again, @Miraculix found benefits of purging (or rather high bottle fills, I believe) in styles I wouldn't have expected to see benefits... so you never know.

I recently did a couple mini-trials, one with a Saison and one with a Belgian-ish beer (a simple extract beer made with M41 Belgian Ale). They are both too young for any final conclusions, but early tastes did not show differences.

Belgian Beer: Most of the bottles were carbonated with a mixture of sugar, PMB, and Ascorbic Acid which a few bottles only got a sugar cube (so no PMB or Ascorbic Acid). All the bottles were filled high with a goal of leaving around 5 mm of headspace. Early on I did some trials, and could not taste any difference (at that point I was more checking if the additions had a negative impact on carbonation and/or flavor). The beer has been in the bottle for 3 months now, so it is time to open up a pair and do a more focused trail.

Saison: These bottles were filled to a "standard fill" and most of the bottles were then purged with CO2 from my tank before capping. I set aside a 6-pack that I did not purge. This batch was bottled about 5 weeks ago. I opened up a pair of the bottles last week and in a blind tasted, I could not consistently pick out any differences. I will plan to cycle back at the 3 month mark.

In both cases, the beers are being stored in a upstairs room that is usually in the 72F temp range.
 
I recently did a couple mini-trials, one with a Saison and one with a Belgian-ish beer (a simple extract beer made with M41 Belgian Ale). They are both too young for any final conclusions, but early tastes did not show differences.

Belgian Beer: Most of the bottles were carbonated with a mixture of sugar, PMB, and Ascorbic Acid which a few bottles only got a sugar cube (so no PMB or Ascorbic Acid). All the bottles were filled high with a goal of leaving around 5 mm of headspace. Early on I did some trials, and could not taste any difference (at that point I was more checking if the additions had a negative impact on carbonation and/or flavor). The beer has been in the bottle for 3 months now, so it is time to open up a pair and do a more focused trail.

Saison: These bottles were filled to a "standard fill" and most of the bottles were then purged with CO2 from my tank before capping. I set aside a 6-pack that I did not purge. This batch was bottled about 5 weeks ago. I opened up a pair of the bottles last week and in a blind tasted, I could not consistently pick out any differences. I will plan to cycle back at the 3 month mark.

In both cases, the beers are being stored in a upstairs room that is usually in the 72F temp range.
The purging method seems not to be reliable at all, based on what other people did and posted here. The 5mm method is reliable, so it would have been interesting to see how a few of the saison bottles would have behaved with only 5mm to the rim.
 
I'd be very surprised if you find any differences between purged and unpurged in such a style as a porter. Then again, @Miraculix found benefits of purging (or rather high bottle fills, I believe) in styles I wouldn't have expected to see benefits... so you never know.
I agree. So far I can't tell any difference with that style. I have one more control bottle to compare to a bottle purged with Private Preserve.

I'm getting closer to brewing again, and want to eventually produce a hoppy ale that would be a better candidate for comparing control bottles to purged and/or headspace-minimized ones.

It sounds like you are not using ascorbic acid anymore.
 
The purging method seems not to be reliable at all, based on what other people did and posted here. The 5mm method is reliable, so it would have been interesting to see how a few of the saison bottles would have behaved with only 5mm to the rim.
In some of my prior attempts with hoppy beers, using CO2 to purge the headspace was very effective. I recall seeing several other reporting success with purging the headspace as well.
 
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