Secondary fermentation oxidation

[msu05]

I have a brown ale fermenting right now. It was in the primary for 15 days and today I racked to the secondary fermenter, a 5 gallon glass carboy. I was going to give it another week or two in primary before kegging, but I got a little antsy and wanted the primary fermenter for my next batch which I plan on brewing today or tomorrow. The problem I have is there is a decent amount of head space in the carboy. I was only able to rack about 4.5 gallons worth. Will this be fine to leave for a week or should I rack to a keg and carbonate and let age for a few weeks? The gravity reading today was 1.013 which is dead on what the recipe called for. Like I said, I wanted to let it sit 3-4 weeks in the primary and keg, but this is only my second and I wanted to get another one going. I wasn't planning on having this much head space in the carboy.

 

[rod]

when i have too much headspace in a carboy - i purge with some c02 to drive the 02 out.

 

[TipsyDragon]

your beer will outgas when you rack it. this means that some dissolved CO2 will escape and fill the head space protecting your beer.

if your worried you could fill the head space in the carboy with CO2 from the canister you use for you keg. stick the hose down in there and turn on the gas. give it a few seconds then cap while at the same time you are pouring CO2 into the carboy.

 

[msu05]

I put some CO2 in the carboy. I turned it on for 5-10 seconds. I got the entire surface covered with bubbles and then re-capped it. I got a bubble to come out of the airlock when I finished. Does this sound good enough to purge all the O2?

 

[Nurmey]

Even if you had done nothing, your beer would have been fine. There is lots of CO2 that comes out of beer when you rack and it re-blankets your beer.