Why not degas beer?

[DroneKeeper]

I've only made wine/mead so far but my first batch of beer is ready to rack this afternoon (making a kit that wants cacao nibs added in a secondary.) I use an All-in-one vacuum pump to rack my mead and use a short racking cane to help with degassing during transfers...why not use it for my beer also?

I understand that I would be removing CO2 from a beer that I intend to carbonate later anyways but isn't the whole idea behind degassing a must/wort to help with yeast health and increase clarity of the final product? I've seen some questions on this and most responses are concerned about oxygenation of the beer during degassing but I would think this would be mostly eliminated when done via vacuum pump. Thoughts?

 

[Yooper]

I've only made wine/mead so far but my first batch of beer is ready to rack this afternoon (making a kit that wants cacao nibs added in a secondary.) I use an All-in-one vacuum pump to rack my mead and use a short racking cane to help with degassing during transfers...why not use it for my beer also?

I understand that I would be removing CO2 from a beer that I intend to carbonate later anyways but isn't the whole idea behind degassing a must/wort to help with yeast health and increase clarity of the final product? I've seen some questions on this and most responses are concerned about oxygenation of the beer during degassing but I would think this would be mostly eliminated when done via vacuum pump. Thoughts?

Once the beer is finished, there is no reason at all to degas or worry about yeast health. The wine degassing for yeast health is done long before FG is reached. It doesn't enhance clarity, except for allowing the suspended solids to drop out which happens anyway due to gravity.

I can't see that it would hurt, if done under c02 pressure, but I can't see any benefit at all either.

To enhance clarity, filtering the finished beer (utilizing the pump) would work.

 

[Homercidal]

Most beer simply doesn't ferment to high enough gravity to worry about the CO2 affecting yeast health much. Most brewers would rather just let it settle out.

That said, I've wondered if degassing would be beneficial for a really high gravity beer. If you plan on setting it sit for months, like some wines, then degassing using CO2 to flush with, might be an interesting experiment. If this were done as an Xbeeriment, I would bet the triangle testers couldn't pick it from the regular process, though.