Mitigating oxygen from head space in secondary

[jeremyross]

I'm doing my first beer in a new kit, and I discovered the lid on the plastic bucket I'm using as primary does not seal well. Because of this, and the fact that I want to free up this bucket, I'm going to rack to a glass carboy.

However, I had originally planned to not use a secondary, and I decided to only do 4 gallons in order to boost the ABV some. Now I'm concerned about the head space after I rack to a 5-gallon carboy.

I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to add, say, .5 pound sugar to the secondary so the resulting CO2 pushes out the oxygen. Would this be effective? Is it a bad idea? Is 1 gallon of head space not enough to be concerned with? If I do add sugar, do I need to boil it with water first? Looking for any advice and techniques. Thanks!

 

[frazier]

At my local grocery store, I can buy dry ice by the pound. For a dollar you could get a chunk plenty big to drop into the carboy, and rack the beer on top of it. Plenty of CO2 to displace anything else.

Cheers,