oh no! I oxidized!

So I'm new to this brewing thing, and I am already obsessed with reading tips and the great stuff you people have already put on this website. I have my first brew in the 2nd carboy now (I wanted to learn how to use 2 carboys right away, and not learn after 4-5 brews). However, I never talked to the owner of the home brew store (or read on the internet yet) about the dangers of oxidizing your beer when transferring the fermented beer from the fermentation bucket to carboy 2... I know... Huge newbie move.

So it was pretty bad reflecting on it.... the damn auto siphon I was using broke after about 3 pumps on putting into the carboy. I did know it was important to keep the beer in a sealed container, so I assumed speed was more important than stopping and buying another auto siphon in the middle of this process. I thought it was a great idea to just pour the fermented beer into the 2nd carboy through a funnel. And to compound the problem, once I was done I lifted the filled carboy and walked it (sloshing all over the place) to my mini brew area. And for some reason (I guess I wanted to see bubbles for some reason... like a little kid) I shook the carboy a few hours after this all happened again!

So today I was surfing the web and getting tips, and I came upon how stupid that all was. I see mixed opinions about how bad oxidizing can be, but to this degree...... Lesson learned most def.

So pretty much I was trying to get some skilled brewers opinion of... How badly did I ruin my beer? on a percentage scale, what are the odds of my beer being completely undrinkable?

I am brewing a irish red ale, it has about another week in the 2nd carboy I believe... Cheers!

Drink it quickly. It'll get worse with time but oxidation does take some time. Hope you're thirsty!

How long was it in the first carboy? If it is still fermenting and has some active yeast, they will get rid of some of the oxygen you introduced. Otherwise, not much you can do about it now but let it finish out and drink it fast. I don't think it will be undrinkable.

Hoppy beers are some of the worst beers to oxidize, O2 and hops are a bad combo. A red is probably one of the better beers to accidentally oxidize. If you racked to secondary before it reached terminal gravity, Kaz is right that the yeast might metabolize some of the O2.

You won't know till you know. Just drink it. As long as it tastes good, drink it. Once it stops tasting good, stop drinking it.

woozy said:

You won't know till you know. Just drink it. As long as it tastes good, drink it. Once it stops tasting good, stop drinking it.

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Well, of course there's that as well

poley said:

Hoppy beers are some of the worst beers to oxidize, O2 and hops are a bad combo. A red is probably one of the better beers to accidentally oxidize. If you racked to secondary before it reached terminal gravity, Kaz is right that the yeast might metabolize some of the O2.

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Just out of curiosity, would the additional fermentation from the priming solution (providing it's being bottled) also help metabolize the O2?

If there was no additional O2 pickup during the bottling process, then yes. Most of the time there's additional O2 pickup during bottling, which the yeast will mitigate during bottle conditioning.

Just try not to worry about it too much. The beer won't be ruined beyond repair, and you'll remember next time

Thanks everybody for the great replies! I am learning patience is indeed a virtue in this hobby.

My wort was in the fermenter for 7 days, and it was fermenting at a happy rate for around 3 days and started to settle down. It's still winter here, so temp was almost an issue, but it never went below 63ish degrees. When I opened the fermenter up for transfer, it had a solid ring of gunk just above the beer (which I read was good), and it smelled like beer (which I assumed was also good).

Unfortunately, my girlfriend broke my hydrometer when we were opening the kit, but I went and bought a new one when we did the transfer. It was about 1.030 I believe (I regret not writing it down... now I know). I decided to go by the time the instructions deemed were right rather than the hydrometer anyways, because I am still learning how to master that tool as well.

Anyways, so I am gathering that oxidizing the beer just makes the beer spoil faster after the bottling process is complete? Example, if my beer was going to be good for 180 days after bottling without this mishap it will only be good for 90 days after the bottling process is complete now?

Think of it more like staling than spoling.

poley said:

If there was no additional O2 pickup during the bottling process, then yes. Most of the time there's additional O2 pickup during bottling, which the yeast will mitigate during bottle conditioning.

Just try not to worry about it too much. The beer won't be ruined beyond repair, and you'll remember next time

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I'm not there yet! My beer in currently in the 2nd carboy and has been there for about a week, I was going to give it a total of 14 days in the 2nd carboy.

I think I am doing the first folly many home brewers make, which is being way too concerned!

To hopefully put your mind at ease, I've had one experience with adding unwanted oxygen to beer. I had an IPA that I was racking after dry hopping. The hops never really dropped out of suspension, so they were constantly clocking up the tip of my autosiphon that I had covered with a paint strainer. When it would do this, it started sucking air from the top and letting a lot of bubbles in between the cane and the outside of the autosiphon. It would do this every couple of minutes. I would stop, try and shake off the hop particles, then start it again. The entire transfer was a complete nightmare. Between swirling the autosiphon to clear the tip and just the air that was being let in. I'm sure I put plenty of oxygen into the beer. I was racking into a keg, so I immediately put it on CO2 and purged the crap out of it. It definitely wasn't the best beer I ever made, but it was still a decent IPA and I really never noticed much in the way of an off flavor from oxydation. I had it on tap for about 2 months and pretty much tasted the same the whole time.

I really don't have enough experience to tell you any percentages or what it takes to really oxydize a beer to the point of tasting bad, but I'm pretty sure i did a fare job of adding oxygen to my beer and it really was no worse for it. Basically, what I'm getting to, is that I think you'll be fine. It probably won't be an award winning beer, but all in all, I think you'll have a good time drinking all of it.

My first IPA was the same thing...autosiphon getting stuck and a lot of oxygen got in the beer. I think the off taste was very noticeable. I am straining the trub from the next attempt as I transfer to the primary from the boil kettle. Also, I will not use a secondary on the next attempt.

So, I have a friend who "dumps" all of his beer when going to secondary and bottling bucket and his beers turn out pretty good. I think he said he uses a funnel too. I don't think he was kidding me when he told me this, but maybe he was b.s.ing me.

Anyway, I had a bunch of his beers at an event and they were all good. Maybe, we drank fast enough that the oxygen wasn't an issue, maybe bottle conditions scrubs the oxygen, but bottle your beer and start drinking, when it gets oxidized you will know.

RmikeVT said:

So, I have a friend who "dumps" all of his beer when going to secondary and bottling bucket and his beers turn out pretty good. I think he said he uses a funnel too. I don't think he was kidding me when he told me this, but maybe he was b.s.ing me.

Anyway, I had a bunch of his beers at an event and they were all good. Maybe, we drank fast enough that the oxygen wasn't an issue, maybe bottle conditions scrubs the oxygen, but bottle your beer and start drinking, when it gets oxidized you will know.

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For full disclosure, my IPA had additional issues, but oxygen was certainly one of them. I also got little hop flavor (but a good deal of bitter). I think if there were more citrusy hop flavor, the stale oxygen flavor, coupled with the bitterness, would have been less obvious. I'm still drinking those IPA's, by the way. They are far from great but still better than a Budweiser, in my opinion.

OP, you're going to get oxidation. No two ways about this. Thing is, it won't be apparent immediately, so start drinkig the beer as soon as it is carbed up properly.

Keep drinking it, give it away, whatever. When you start to get the "wet cardboard" flavor, you know that oxidation has arrived, and will only get worse. Just enjoy this beer while it is young.

Is it possible for him to add some honey or dme to start another fermentation and reduce the oxygen?

You might get lucky depending on how much disoved CO2 was in the beer... it could have protected your beer.

BUT:

Don't move your beer at all.... IMHO there is little need to.

I ferment in Plastc "sometimes" and I have a SS conical... most of my beers stay in the primary and do not get transfered.

BUT I keg so the beer gets clearer over time anyway..

woozy said:

You won't know till you know. Just drink it. As long as it tastes good, drink it. Once it stops tasting good, stop drinking it.

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This is very Zen. I like it!

Originally Posted by woozy View Post
You won't know till you know. Just drink it. As long as it tastes good, drink it. Once it stops tasting good, stop drinking it.

pfgonzo said:

This is very Zen. I like it!

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Well, there's really only so much one can say.

Yes, you made a mistake and there's a good chance your beer has been badly affected by it.

However, there's still a possibility it wasn't. And if it was, we do not know how badly.

The only thing to do is to make a note of the mistake, Drink the beer and observe the result to get one data-point richer in learning how to predict the effects of oxidation, And try to learn from your mistake.

What else can one do?

lombahdo1986 said:

so pretty much i was trying to get some skilled brewers opinion of... How badly did i ruin my beer? On a percentage scale, what are the odds of my beer being completely undrinkable?

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36.4%

jakenbacon said:

36.4%

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I was thinking more like 33.2%

I was going to say 37.2% but I think I rounded the answer to one of the intermediate calculations. Darned decimal points get me every time.

What about a wheat beer? With almost no hops? Will that still suffer from oxidation?

Alright alright. Something to keep in mind is, before you pitch yeast, you often want to oxygenate your wort. For beers, ciders, and wines it is a real challenge to get oxygen into the wort/must.

There is a lot of dissolved CO2 in fermenting beer, and some stray sloshing is not going to disturb the balance all that badly. Winemakers need to degas their wines periodically and it takes diligence to keep it degassed. Yeah, beermaking isn't winemaking, but it is similar enough to conclude that a stray splash or so is unlikely to ruin your beer. Sloshing the beer in the fermenter is A-OK fine as there is nothing but CO2 in the headspace.

So, short of spraying your beer into the air through a nozzle and collecting it as it rains back down and then bubbling pure O2 through it, oxygenation is unlikely to be a problem. Even if you got a lot of O2 in the beer, it takes a while to oxidize. I wouldn't freak out about it.

Thunder_Chicken said:

So, short of spraying your beer into the air through a nozzle and collecting it as it rains back down and then bubbling pure O2 through it, oxygenation is unlikely to be a problem. Even if you got a lot of O2 in the beer, it takes a while to oxidize. I wouldn't freak out about it.

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I know this an old thread, but I have been trolling the web for a comment like this...and i am going to take it as a 'true fact'!