Oxygen problem during transfer

[Magnatron]

I posted on another thread that while transferring my beer using a transfer pump, there was a lot of bubbles in the stream from the carboy to the keg. On further examination, the pump was found to be faulty, and the housing is letting in air as it operates. Unfortunately, it now appears that a pretty good amount of air was injected to the fermented wort during this transfer.

I usually don't do a secondary on most of my ales, but rather transfer the beer after primary fermentation has mostly subsided to a keg and allow it to condition there for a week or so before putting it in the cooler. This is what I did with this batch as well.

So my question:

Is it a pretty good bet that the secondary fermentation that would occur in while the keg is conditioning will scrub up the oxygen that was absorbed during the transfer? Or will I likely have some skunked-up beer here? Should I put the thing on ice right away, or leave it at conditioning temps for a while?

 

[Docjowles]

What's the beer? If it's something you're planning to drink quickly anyway, I'd say chill it down real cold and start pouring so you get through the batch before staling even matters.

If it's going to hang around untapped for months, I might try naturally carbonating it with sugar to kick up the yeast and consume the oxygen like you said. I don't know enough to say whether it would be best to let the carbonation proceed at room temp so it happens quickly or at near-freezing so the staling reactions are minimized.

That's my wild-ass guess, interested to hear other thoughts.

 

[Bensiff]

Skunking comes from UV so you are safe there. I always hit the keg with around 30-40 lbs of CO2 on the 'out' side to bubble it through the beer before putting it in the fridge to condition (just make sure to have a one way valve or you're going to get beer in your reg if you do this). While CO2 will not bond with oxygen (as far as I know) to pull it out of the beer I hope that bubbling it through the beer will push any oxygen that might have gotten in during transfer up and out of the beer to some degree. It also purges the headspace with CO2 so the beer will be protected with a blanket of CO2. Oxygen also helps bacteria to grow as does temperature. So if you purge your beer with CO2 and condition it cold you should be fine. I would just not plan on drinking the beer in the next few months to be sure it doesn't get oxidized.