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Oxidation during transfer to secondary??????

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DeepSeaRick

Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2012
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Location
San Diego
I am the type that usually acts first and researches later, and once again I am kicking myself for being this way.

I am making an Arrogant Bastard Clone. I had it sitting in the primary fermenter for one week and someone told me I should transfer it to a secondary. I siphoned out the primary bucket into my boiling pot (splashing the hell out of it the whole time) and then cleaned my bucket and siphoned it back into the bucket (again splashing the hell out of it). It is now sealed in the plastic bucket again with my air lock in place.

SO EXPERTS!!! Tell me what you think, did I just ruin my batch and create a 5 gallon toilet bowl mixture??? Is there anything I could do to salvage it? I just did this about an hour ago, 2pm Saturday 14 April 2012.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!
:mug:
 
If you sanitized your boiling pot and siphon etc before the transfer and exercised reasonable caution with it while it was out of the fermenter, you're probably ok.

True, it didn't need to be aerated at this point, but I'm not sure that would hurt it too much. You might just need to leave it sit a little longer now. The only way to know for sure is to ride the storm out and see what you've got when you're done. If it's contaminated I don't know of anything you can do to salvage it, but if your transfer was clean then you should be ok. Just wait it out.

Moving to a secondary to get the beer off the yeast bed can be a good idea in some cases to prevent off flavors, but a lot of brewers claim that it's often unnecessary. I think it's kind of a matter of opinion.

If you're going to do it. Best to use an ale pale with a spigot as your primary. And then do the transfer with sanitized tubing in to a sanitized secondary. This way you know the transfer is clean and you don't splash or aerate the beer.

Good luck!
 
I transfer my beer several times after primary and have never had an issue with oxidation. I use a pot that I warm up honey in when I bottle, so I siphon into the pot from the secondary then into bottles...no issues. I really don't splash around but I don't tip toe around when i transfer either...your fine
 
You should attempt not to add oxygen to the beer but probably will not effect short term flavor. If you were to keep for months or enter into a contest, then they may taste "oxidation". We used to secondary but have stopped as the only thing you get is aeration. We have moved to Conicals so no need at all anymore but even when we have a 5 gal batch in a carboy, we no longer \transfer to secondary. Waste of time in our minds and we notice no difference.
 
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