Oxidation Fear

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LookMaNoHands

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Hi all -

Just finished our second batch (Irish Stout). Used 5 gal carboy for primary with blow-off. Transfered to bucket for secondary (may have been first mistake) and used airlock.

Smelled great going during transfer to secondary. Now I'm getting a really strong cider smell from it after 6 days in secondary. Did oxidation kick in and ruin the beer?

What's the best way to transfer to a secondary and avoid oxidation? Was using the bucket for a secondary a bad idea?
 
I am new but most who use a secondary seem to go the opposite way....bucket primary then carboy for secondary. Maybe too much head space in the bucket after initial fermentation?
 
Welcome to HBT!
Oxidation takes months to show up and it is a taste not a smell.

I would guess that you kicked up some fermentation in the secondary. Never judge a beer by smell or taste until it has been in the bottle or keg long enough to age and carbonate.
 
Oxydation isn't instantaenous, it is something that would develop over time, and often long after we drink the beer anyway. It's usually a long term storage issue. And it takes a lot of splashing and such to actually have harmed the your beer. Someone on a podcast likened it to actually pumping your entire oxygen bottle/airstone into your finished beer, to oxydize it.

But don't worry about any smells in the fermenters, be it primary or secondary...

The thing to remember though is that if you are smelling this during fermentation not to worry. During fermentation all manner of stinky stuff is given off (ask lager brewers about rotten egg/sulphur smells, or Apfelwein makers about "rhino farts,") like we often say, fermentation is often ugly AND stinky and PERFECTLY NORMAL.

It's really only down the line, AFTER the beer has been fermented (and often after it has bottle conditioned even,) when you should consider being concerned and trying to determine why.

I think too many new brewers focus to much on this stuff too early in the beer's journey. And they panic unnecessarily.

A lot of the stuff you smell/taste initially more than likely ends up disappearing either during a long primary/primary & secondary combo, Diacetyl rests and even during bottle conditioning.

If I find a flavor/smell, I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

Fementation is often ugly, smelly and crappy tasting in the beginning and perfectly normal. The various conditioning phases, be it long primary, secondarying, D-rests, bottle conditioning, AND LAGERING, are all part of the process where the yeast, and co2 correct a lot of the normal production of the byproducts of fermentation.

Lagering is a prime example of this. Lager yeast are prone to the production of a lot of byproducts, the most familiar one is sulphur compounds (rhino farts) but in the dark cold of the lagering process, which is at the minimum of a month (I think many homebrewers don't lager long enough) the yeast slowly consumes all those compounds which results in extremely clean tasting beers if done skillfully.

Ales have their own version of this, but it's all the same.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer:

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned.
 
yeah. we knew it wasn't the ideal way to go about it. hadn't thought about the headspace though. i'll keep that in mind.
 
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