Secondary fermentation and oxygen

[MSK_Chess]

I understand you're wanting to defend your position. But, like I said:



And for as long as I'm a member of this site and I run across a thread about secondaries, I'm going to keep posting this.

Sure but if you still cannot tell us how much oxygenation occurs nor how detrimental it is supposed to be then what you are saying has no empirical basis other than an appeal to authority, that being your own. On that basis you could tell us you were a World war one flying ace who flew with the Red Barron and we would be forced to believe you. I am not saying that we should or should not do a secondary I am merely asking for evidence, why not. Its not necessary because I say its not necessary is not evidence.

 

[oujens]

Actually having read the Germanbrewing forums and the published process to reduce hotside aeration I remain unconvinced that hot side aeration has much discernible effect but I certainly don't want to debate it here. I am interested mainly in post fermentation oxygenation and how susceptible or how quickly oxygenation can have a detrimental effect on certain types of beers. I was under the impression that malt focused beers did not suffer to the same extent as hop focused beers. To date I have just read a single paper that was not a little technical in detail but was mainly concerned with commercial packaging and transportation. If you can please provide any links it would be appreciated.

Not sure if you've done so already, but a lot of the discussion on the German Brewing forum has moved to lowoxygenbrewing.com. There are some good write ups on the cold side. Perhaps you might find it beneficial. Off the top of my head, I believe the recommended DO in final packaging is <.1 ppm, so essentially zero. A figure that was thrown out on one of the articles is that a shot glass full of air introduces .4 ppm DO, which would probably take 1 month to show signs of oxidation. Note that some of these signs can be subtle, which in my case was metallic notes and slight flavor change. Recently a poster purchased a DO meter and measured an IPA he kegged with .95 ppm DO. He noted flavor and aroma loss almost instantly after kegging. Recently he adopted some low oxygen cold side practices and his IPA measured .05 ppm DO. His juicy IPA was intact.

As others pointed out, the amount of oxygen introduced will determine how quickly a beer deteriorates. Standard homebrew kegging procedures can be vulnerable to oxidation. Instead of transferring to a secondary, I would transfer with a few gravity points left to a keg and spund. It works wonders.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't do a secondary for an entirely different reason. I AM GENERALLY PRETTY LAZY. I do believe that you lessen your risk of oxidation and infection by not doing a secondary. I also believe the benefits from doing one is minimal. Therefore I skip the extra step. My friends and I think my beers compare very positively with any commercial beer and often we believe they are even better.

I do whatever I can (withing my laziness standards) to give my beers the best chance of being the best they can be. So - no secondary for me.

The few secondaries I have done have not produced a beer that was significantly more clear. I could not tell the difference. I have not noticed any difference in yeast flavor either. Strongly flavored yeast are yeasty and clean yeasts are not, that with my skipping the secondary practice.

No science, just personal experience.

 

[dyqik]

I'm seeing the other point of view now. However, in that video, they prove at the 2:20 mark that the heavier the gas, the longer it takes to mix with oxygen, thus proving that the bed of CO2 can exist, it is merely temporary. It took a half of an hour for those gasses to mix. How long does it take to transfer to a carboy? Two minutes? I am still 100% convinced that blowing CO2 into a carboy not only replaces almost all of the air with CO2, but the siphon as well, thus minimizing exposure to oxygen.


I misunderstood the gas/weight argument. Like most home brewers, I knew not the exact science of what I was doing, I simply knew the positive effects.

Sorry for sharing bad science. Still good advice

As mentioned on some of the other threads (or possibly upthread here), the diffusion constant is a function of the gases in question (root of the sum of the reciprocals of the masses). That's why air diffuses slowly into a heavy gas like SF6, compared to the diffusion rate of oxygen into CO2.

There's also question of how much diffusion is needed to cause issues. 1 ppm of O2 is reportedly an issue, but would be pretty hard to detect by the methods shown in these videos.

Because I'm a physicist and I should be able to work this out , let's do a not-so-quick calculation:

The mass diffusivity of a binary mixture of O2-CO2 is 0.159 cm²/s at STP (25C, 1 atm) (this varies as absolute temperature to the 3/2 power, so is about 0.14 at 25C). I can't find a direct measurement of the diffusivity of trace oxygen in CO2 but since the opposite value (trace CO2 in air) is almost identical to the binary mixture value, let's take it to be the same. The diffusion current is J = -D dn/dx where dn/dx is the concentration gradient.

Let's take the carboy neck as an example, and say it is 5 cm long, 8 cm² in area (1.25" diameter) and that after the neck, the headspace is free to mix. We are worried about small amounts of oxygen, so lets call the oxygen concentration gradient a constant 0.21*4.23e-5 mol/cm³ / 5 cm, = 1.766e-6 mol / cm^4. The molecular flux is then 0.159*1.766e-6*8 = 2.26e-6 mol / s through the carboy neck

Assuming that that oxygen eventually gets into the beer*, the effective rate of increase of eventual oxygen concentration in the beer is given by the flux over the mols of beer in the carboy. Since the molar mass of water is 18g/mol and the density is 1000g/litre, a 5 gallon (18.9L) batch of beer has just about 1000 mols of water plus some other substances. Let's call it a nice round 1000 mols - you can adjust the values hereafter if you really want. So the final effective concentration of oxygen in the beer will rise at about 2.25 ppb O2 for every second that the carboy neck is open. Getting to the 0.1 ppm that is reported to be a target will take about 45 seconds at 25C, about a minute at 0C. 1 ppm that might be noticeable would take about seven to ten minutes.

So my very tentative conclusion (and assuming that I'm vaguely competent at setting up and doing these calculations) is that if there's no mixing or turbulence at the carboy neck (which is unlikely), then you might get away with opening the top of the carboy for up ten minutes before closing it and leaving the beer in place. But as soon as you put something in or out, that conclusion is invalid because it will cause mixing.

However, if you are transferring, then you are pulling air in through the carboy neck, and will have fairly complete mixing in the carboy. Then the critical number is how fast the surface of the beer can take up oxygen, which is a much lower rate than the flow of O2 through the neck of the carboy. In the destination vessel, then there's a flow of CO2 out of the purged container, which will prevent diffusion unless the flow of beer is very slow. Since you are removing the beer from the carboy though and putting it in the destination vessel, the O2 that is drawn in won't have much time to do much damage.

This all feels about right - people make pretty good beer in carboys without causing terrible oxidation. That doesn't mean it can't be better with more care and that that might be necessary for some styles.

By the way, in a bucket, the surface area will about a hundred times larger, with maybe double the distance for diffusion to happen to the surface of the liquid. So the rate of oxygen uptake will be about fifty times faster, and that's without considering how much easier it is to disturb the CO2/air interface and get mixing. Definitely don't rely on CO2 blankets when opening buckets and then closing up and leaving the beer in them. Opening for transfer is probably not so bad.

*As oxygen reacts to oxidise things in the beer, there will be a concentration gradient set up from the headspace to the beer. That will mean that the beer _gradually_ pulls in more and more oxygen.

 

[MSK_Chess]

Not sure if you've done so already, but a lot of the discussion on the German Brewing forum has moved to lowoxygenbrewing.com. There are some good write ups on the cold side. Perhaps you might find it beneficial. Off the top of my head, I believe the recommended DO in final packaging is <.1 ppm, so essentially zero. A figure that was thrown out on one of the articles is that a shot glass full of air introduces .4 ppm DO, which would probably take 1 month to show signs of oxidation. Note that some of these signs can be subtle, which in my case was metallic notes and slight flavor change. Recently a poster purchased a DO meter and measured an IPA he kegged with .95 ppm DO. He noted flavor and aroma loss almost instantly after kegging. Recently he adopted some low oxygen cold side practices and his IPA measured .05 ppm DO. His juicy IPA was intact.

As others pointed out, the amount of oxygen introduced will determine how quickly a beer deteriorates. Standard homebrew kegging procedures can be vulnerable to oxidation. Instead of transferring to a secondary, I would transfer with a few gravity points left to a keg and spund. It works wonders.

Interesting. Very interesting! I have read the German brewing articles and the procedure for reducing Hotside aeration. Will check out lowoxygenbrewing dot com for sure.

This was my understanding as well. It takes month(s) for oxidisation to make itself manifest in a tangible way. For me personally I am obsessed with clarity and thus oxidisation is an enemy because it can be a precursor for issues with clarity for it forms bonds with other elements to produce haze. I am just gonna come right out and say it, I despair at New England IPA's and hazy beers that all the hipsters in the UK are quaffing. I don't care if its meant to be more flavoursome, I like diamond clear beer! No chicken soup please! I am obsessed with clarity. Oxygen must die!

I liked the idea of filling a keg completely with sanitizer and purging it completely with co2. This would avoid the diffusion mentioned above. I thought of doing the same thing, transferring to a purged vessel when fermentation was almost complete but was counselled not to transfer when active fermentation was taking place. The reason for this was that perhaps it could stall and it was deemed to be 'bad practice'. I have a spunding valve but have never used it. In your opinion is it ok to wait till there is a few OG points and to transfer to another Keg and spund out the remaining fermentation?

 

[MSK_Chess]

I don't do a secondary for an entirely different reason. I AM GENERALLY PRETTY LAZY. I do believe that you lessen your risk of oxidation and infection by not doing a secondary. I also believe the benefits from doing one is minimal. Therefore I skip the extra step. My friends and I think my beers compare very positively with any commercial beer and often we believe they are even better.

I do whatever I can (withing my laziness standards) to give my beers the best chance of being the best they can be. So - no secondary for me.

The few secondaries I have done have not produced a beer that was significantly more clear. I could not tell the difference. I have not noticed any difference in yeast flavor either. Strongly flavored yeast are yeasty and clean yeasts are not, that with my skipping the secondary practice.

No science, just personal experience.

Sure. Brulosophy actually conducted an experiment and came to the conclusion that a beer left in the primary was actually more clear than one that had been transferred to a secondary. For me I like to clarify my beer in the secondary with PVPP and gelatin. I have tried it both in the primary and the secondary and found that some yeast, especially Kolsch yeast is quite powdery and susceptible to return quite quickly into suspicion if moved and I therefore remove it from the cake. Cold crash it and clarify it.

The idea and I hope anyone will correct me if I am wrong is that because commercial breweries use conical fermenter they can easily remove yeast and trub in a closed circuit bypassing the need for a secondary. This idea was adopted by the homebrewing community and we now have a trend for primary only. If I had a conical fermenter I would forego a secondary too, but I don't.

I would love a fermentasaurus for it appears to me to be the closest thing to a commercial brewery allowing one to remove trub, ferment under pressure, introduce hops etc in a closed circuit but sadly they do not sell them in the UK! Such rotten luck!

 

[TheMadKing]

I'm just going to leave this here and go back to making beer

http://brulosophy.com/2017/06/19/po...-and-storage-temperature-exbeeriment-results/

 

[bradleypariah]

So my very tentative conclusion (and assuming that I'm vaguely competent at setting up and doing these calculations) is that if there's no mixing or turbulence at the carboy neck (which is unlikely), then you might get away with opening the top of the carboy for up ten minutes before closing it and leaving the beer in place. But as soon as you put something in or out, that conclusion is invalid because it will cause mixing. ... if you are transferring, then you are pulling air in through the carboy neck, and will have fairly complete mixing in the carboy. ... By the way, in a bucket, the surface area will about a hundred times larger, with maybe double the distance for diffusion to happen to the surface of the liquid.

I think you missed my picture on page three of this discussion. As mentioned in the OP, this is about a closed CO2 transfer, from one glass carboy to another. There is no bucket. There is no oxygen coming in to the primary vessel. CO2 pressure is pushing the beer into the secondary. I appreciate your effort to explain this to me. I read the whole post.

I do believe that you lessen your risk of oxidation and infection by not doing a secondary. I also believe the benefits from doing one is minimal.

The reason I transfer to secondary is that it is the easiest way to harvest my yeast for the next batch. If I want to brew before the beer in primary is ready to keg, I will transfer it just to snag the yeast.

My primary fermentation vessel is a 5g glass carboy. If anyone knows how to get a sufficient yeast sample from there without moving the beer, I'd love to hear it.

 

[oujens]

I'm just going to leave this here and go back to making beer

http://brulosophy.com/2017/06/19/po...-and-storage-temperature-exbeeriment-results/

There are several things that stick out in this experiment:

1) Use of gelatin post fermentation does add a level of DO to the beer
2) writer notes that both beers were transferred to non-purged kegs as part of his standard procedure
3) No DO measurements were taken

Based on the procedures, I have doubt that the "relatively low oxidation" batch would be protected from flavors that can develop from oxygen post-fermentation. Without the DO measurement, we cannot determine the how much more oxygen was introduced to the "oxidized" batch.

I could be wrong based on their intent, but it doesn't seem oxygen is really being controlled in this experiment. I would be more interested if the writer were to use keg spunding for one batch and using the writer's standard kegging procedure for the other (into non-purged keg). The only thing this experiment shows is that possibly flavor profile is similar between two batches that contain a low and high level of oxygen post fermentation. If that was the intent, then I guess this experiment can demonstrate that.

 

[TheMadKing]

There are several things that stick out in this experiment:

1) Use of gelatin post fermentation does add a level of DO to the beer
2) writer notes that both beers were transferred to non-purged kegs as part of his standard procedure
3) No DO measurements were taken

Based on the procedures, I have doubt that the "relatively low oxidation" batch would be protected from flavors that can develop from oxygen post-fermentation. Without the DO measurement, we cannot determine the how much more oxygen was introduced to the "oxidized" batch.

I could be wrong based on their intent, but it doesn't seem oxygen is really being controlled in this experiment. I would be more interested if the writer were to use keg spunding for one batch and using the writer's standard kegging procedure for the other (into non-purged keg). The only thing this experiment shows is that possibly flavor profile is similar between two batches that contain a low and high level of oxygen post fermentation. If that was the intent, then I guess this experiment can demonstrate that.

I disagree. If 1ppm oxygen can have detrimental effects on beer, then based on the extreme level of splashing and oxidation of the "oxidized" beer, there should have been a perceptible flavor difference between it and the "minimal precautions" beer. The difference you are describing is

"It must be 0 ppm O2, vs 5 ppm O2 to make a difference"

The fact that he did 5 ppm O2 vs 10 ppm O2 should have the same difference in flavor, unless you can demonstrate that all beer with > 1ppm O2 tastes equally oxidized and thus is indistinguishable.

The fact that there was no perceptible difference between an intentionally splashed and aerated beer vs one with basic precautions tells me that there's no sense it worrying excessively about oxygen. Even if both were "oxidized" none of the taste panel could detect an off flavor. It just didn't make a difference.

Oxygen is virtually ubiquitous in our environment and I really don't think it's the boogeyman many people think. And I really don't believe it's practical to attempt to remove dissolved oxygen from every aspect of brewing. There's very little evidence (other than "my beers vastly improved to my own pallet when I started LODO") that oxygen is detrimental to the extent that it requires a major increase in effort and equipment to eliminate it AT THE HOMEBREW SCALE

Oxygen has become a scapegoat for bad beer, or any change in beer whatsoever over time for that matter.

\end rant

 

[dyqik]

I think you missed my picture on page three of this discussion. As mentioned in the OP, this is about a closed CO2 transfer, from one glass carboy to another. There is no bucket. There is no oxygen coming in to the primary vessel. CO2 pressure is pushing the beer into the secondary. I appreciate your effort to explain this to me. I read the whole post.

I was just thinking about the CO2 blanket myth and carboys generally. This is why pressurized transfer is a nice thing to go for.

 

[bradleypariah]

I was just thinking about the CO2 blanket myth and carboys generally. This is why pressurized transfer is a nice thing to go for.

Agreed, but still I have a hard time calling it a "myth". There are so many videos that prove gas will sit in a container at room temperature for extended periods of time. I'm not a scientist, so I need to stop embarrassing myself by trying to explain why the gas sinks, be it temperature-related or otherwise, I just know that the more of a gas you push into an already-air-filled vessel, the more of the gas there will be, thus minimizing exposure to the air once you start pumping liquid into said gas-filled container. It's like some people are so convinced that gasses mix and dissipate so quickly, they wouldn't even admit that they were crying in a room filled with tear gas. They'd be too busy shouting at me, "*COUGH* The gas is *COUGH* MIXING!! Not *HACK* DISPLACING the oxy-*COUGH*WHEEZE*" LOL It's like, if gas mixes to impotency so fast, why you chokin' homey?

Whatever makes people sleep better at night. The point is that the gas is there. It doesn't just vanish because magic. If you pump CO2 into a carboy for several seconds, there's going to be a lot of CO2 in it, and it will remain there until some other force or atmospheric pressure acts on it. If nothing acts on it directly, it will most likely take upwards of a half of an hour to fully mix with the room's air. I used to think it would take longer, but MadKing's post about air and gas mixing over time proved me wrong. That said, 20 minutes, hell, five minutes is still plenty of time to rack a beer.

So, "myth"? No. "Misconception about why it works"? Yeah.

 

[TheMadKing]

Agreed, but still I have a hard time calling it a "myth". There are so many videos that prove gas will sit in a container at room temperature for extended periods of time. I'm not a scientist, so I need to stop embarrassing myself by trying to explain why the gas sinks, be it temperature-related or otherwise, I just know that the more of a gas you push into an already-air-filled vessel, the more of the gas there will be, thus minimizing exposure to the air once you start pumping liquid into said gas-filled container. It's like some people are so convinced that gasses mix and dissipate so quickly, they wouldn't even admit that they were crying in a room filled with tear gas. They'd be too busy shouting at me, "*COUGH* The gas is *COUGH* MIXING!! Not *HACK* DISPLACING the oxy-*COUGH*WHEEZE*" LOL It's like, if gas mixes to impotency so fast, why you chokin' homey?



Whatever makes people sleep better at night. The point is that the gas is there. It doesn't just vanish because magic. If you pump CO2 into a carboy for several seconds, there's going to be a lot of CO2 in it, and it will remain there until some other force or atmospheric pressure acts on it. If nothing acts on it directly, it will most likely take upwards of a half of an hour to fully mix with the room's air. I used to think it would take longer, but MadKing's post about air and gas mixing over time proved me wrong. That said, 20 minutes, hell, five minutes is still plenty of time to rack a beer.



So, "myth"? No. "Misconception about why it works"? Yeah.

I don't disagree with you that in practice, this works fine. The only hole in this is that you're allowing for "some mixing" to occur. So I ask What threshold is acceptable to you then? Some people find 1ppm oxygen to be too much, so what happens if 10% of the gas in your container is air? How much O2 is dissolved into your beer then?

How can you really control how much oxygen you're dealing with unless you're either measuring it, or taking extreme steps to eliminate it entirely? And if you're not trying to control your oxygen levels but just trying to "minimize" then how much is too much? It's all arbitrary unless you apply repeatable methods that are scientifically sound.

On the other hand, as I said earlier, I think oxygen is not a detrimental as many people believe and basic precautions applied to the right parts of the brewing process will prevent off flavors. Just don't leave your beer exposed to air for any length of time, and purge the headspace in any vessel down to ~0.1ppm oxygen (~10 purges at 30psi in a keg). At the end of the day, do what works for you and what makes beer you can be happy with.

 

[bradleypariah]

I don't disagree with you that in practice, this works fine. The only hole in this is that you're allowing for "some mixing" to occur. [...] How can you really control how much oxygen you're dealing with unless you're either measuring it, or taking extreme steps to eliminate it entirely? [...] as I said earlier, I think oxygen is not a detrimental as many people believe and basic precautions applied to the right parts of the brewing process will prevent off flavors.

We're pretty much on the same page. I am not a purist. I didn't mean to come off as one. I'm not super worried about oxygen either. I just want my yeast so I can brew again. I'm merely sharing a technique that was shared with me to attempt to minimize potential harm to the beer. I think racking to secondary is unnecessary unless you're trying to get your yeast or you're wanting to add fruit. Sometimes simply trying to minimize problems can make all the difference, so I bother to try.

 

[oujens]

I liked the idea of filling a keg completely with sanitizer and purging it completely with co2. This would avoid the diffusion mentioned above. I thought of doing the same thing, transferring to a purged vessel when fermentation was almost complete but was counselled not to transfer when active fermentation was taking place. The reason for this was that perhaps it could stall and it was deemed to be 'bad practice'. I have a spunding valve but have never used it. In your opinion is it ok to wait till there is a few OG points and to transfer to another Keg and spund out the remaining fermentation?

Spunding has worked well for me. I don't believe transferring towards the end of fermentation is detrimental to the final product. In fact, I have a local Brewery who specifically states they capture co2 from fermentation to carb their beer. What I'm not sure of is whether they transfer prior to spunding, but I thought they finish in a conditioning tank prior to lagering. Enough people have reported success with spunding (including transferring with few gravity points remaining) that I would not hesitate to use it. Note there was mention of this process before the "paper" ever hit the message boards. It's nothing new. Of course, this is just one way to handle cold side practices. YMMV, but I think it's a good practice. Only difficult part is timing, but if you miss the window you can let it finish and then use the priming sugar method to scrub o2 during transfer.

 

[Syke]

If anyone knows how to get a sufficient yeast sample from there without moving the beer, I'd love to hear it.

Harvest some yeast before pitching and make a starter.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't do secondaries. I bank yeast BEFORE pitching by making 4 vials from my slightly oversized starter. 5 ml Glycerin, 5 ml yeast and 10 ml water, then frozen. I will also sometimes use part of a yeast cake for a new batch. I do not use a secondary to get the yeast. I just package the beer then either use the yeast cake right away, or put it in a mason jar and save in the refrigerator. I use 6 gallon Better Bottles. Personally I cannot justify the cost of a conical fermenter. My 7 better bottles probably cost only a little over $100 since I bought some of them on buy one get one sales.

 

[jan_b19]

transferring early (just after high krausen does indeed reduce oxidation chance. the beer will keep fermenting and push the oxygen out of the vessel. If you want to be sure you could add a little amount of campden like they do for wine. small amounts (1g or less/10 liters) will not affect the taste of the beer at all.
This discussion has been going on for ages. Some people like to rack to a secondary others don't. I only rack if the beer has to ferment for longer than a month. For example, brewed a saison, I let my saisons ferment for at least 6 weeks. I chose to rack it to a secondary after two weeks exactly for the reasons you described. I like to rack it when they yeast is still very active so there is a smaller chance for oxidation.

 

[MSK_Chess]

It appears to me that one should not be dogmatic and there are certainly many instances when racking is not only essential but highly beneficial other occasions when its not. I really thank those who have expressed their opinions and provided sound reason and empirical evidence when it is necessary to rack and when it is not. We are home-brewers, a kind of artist/scientist hybrid that wants to understand the processes that we are helping nature to foment in order to improve our process to make the best we can with the ingredients we have at our disposal. Understanding is surely the thing to be aimed for - a hearty sláinte! to all

 

[MSK_Chess]

I don't do secondaries. I bank yeast BEFORE pitching by making 4 vials from my slightly oversized starter. 5 ml Glycerin, 5 ml yeast and 10 ml water, then frozen. I will also sometimes use part of a yeast cake for a new batch. I do not use a secondary to get the yeast. I just package the beer then either use the yeast cake right away, or put it in a mason jar and save in the refrigerator. I use 6 gallon Better Bottles. Personally I cannot justify the cost of a conical fermenter. My 7 better bottles probably cost only a little over $100 since I bought some of them on buy one get one sales.

I'd love to try freezing yeast. You could build up a bank of many different varieties and have them at your disposal at any time.

 

[dyqik]

Agreed, but still I have a hard time calling it a "myth". There are so many videos that prove gas will sit in a container at room temperature for extended periods of time.

As I said and showed above, those videos do not demonstrate anything that is particularly relevant to the low-level oxidation of beer. They show that a concentration gradient takes significant time to dissipate by diffusion, and that _much_ of a gas will stay in place in layers for some time. They do not show that gas sits in well-defined layers that prevents one gas moving through another. We don't care what happens to the bulk of the gas. What we care about is how much trace oxygen gets through the layer. The reason I call it a myth is that the layer of CO2 doesn't protect the beer for very long, as oxygen can diffuse through it, and in any case, that layer is very easily disturbed by opening lids, drafts and generally moving equipment around.

This is something I have to deal with in my work - we use open liquid nitrogen containers as a reference temperature load. There's a clearly visible boundary layer between the cold (~200-100 Kelvin) dense nitrogen gas boiled off of the liquid at the top of the container that stays in place for several hours. But over half an hour or so, the boiling point of the liquid nitrogen rises by several degrees as oxygen from the air diffuses through this layer of cold nitrogen gas and dissolves in the liquid. The boiling point of the liquid is a reasonably sensitive measure of the oxygen content of the mixture.

 

[dyqik]

And yes, many beers don't need extreme steps to prevent oxidation to achieve good examples of the style, and are just fine with minimal precautions. English and other cask or aged styles in particular are fine with just basic prevention of splashing, and natural carbonation in the pressure barrel/cask/keg/bottle.

Some styles however, have only really come about as high quality beers because oxidation can be very well controlled on the micro-brewery scale. NEIPA in particular (I suspect this is because bio-transformed hop compounds are very prone to oxidation), and I don't think it would exist as a style if the breweries that developed it had similar oxidation levels to standard homebrew procedures.

 

[kh54s10]

I'd love to try freezing yeast. You could build up a bank of many different varieties and have them at your disposal at any time.

Here is one of the threads that I looked at before I started: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=35891

I don't heat sterilize. I just soak all my equipment in Starsan.

If you want to try this, I suggest that you search for threads and videos. Watch and read them all, and figure out a procedure that will work for you. Whenever I start something new I look at a lot and start with what all the videos/threads have in common. I mostly ignore anything that only one or two give as a needed step.

 

[TrustyOlJohnson]

I dont secondary beers unless primary fermentation is complete and Im racking onto fruit or oak chips.. I did a few times in the beginning, but see no value in it.
Risk of infection..
Exposure to oxygen..
Autolysis doesn't happen in 5 gallon batches..
It is extra risk and work with no reward.
I ferment my ales at 62/65/68, 5 or 7 days each depending on whether it is a low or high gravity beer, for a total of 15 or 21 days, then rack to bottling or keg.

 

[ZmannR2]

My beers taste INCREDIBLE...better than anything I get in stores....never once have I racked to secondary....I've always cold crashed on the yeast cake and never once have had off flavors....my beers are crystal clear once in the keg a week or two...just see below, those letters are on the back side of the glass:

 

[MSK_Chess]

Here is one of the threads that I looked at before I started: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=35891

I don't heat sterilize. I just soak all my equipment in Starsan.

If you want to try this, I suggest that you search for threads and videos. Watch and read them all, and figure out a procedure that will work for you. Whenever I start something new I look at a lot and start with what all the videos/threads have in common. I mostly ignore anything that only one or two give as a needed step.

I like this guy. He inspires confidence.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMFWHm61NEU[/ame]

 

[MSK_Chess]

My beers taste INCREDIBLE...better than anything I get in stores....never once have I racked to secondary....I've always cold crashed on the yeast cake and never once have had off flavors....my beers are crystal clear once in the keg a week or two...just see below, those letters are on the back side of the glass:

not bad, head retention might be better though