The thought is driving me nuts

[NJGeorge]

The thought of oxidation is killing me! Just closed transferred a nice NE IPA from a carboy to keg under co2 pressure. I made sure that even my beer in line and co2 line were purged with co2 along with the keg after pushing out starsan. Whats driving me nuts is when the carboy was almost empty, the racking cane sucked up some air or co2 and went into the keg. Is this enough to oxidize the beer? Was it all co2 that the cane sucked up or was there o2 in there as well? Hope I didn't ruin a great beer.

 

[JonM]

It was probably CO2 but, even if it was room air, it doesn't sound like enough to do any harm. I bet it's fine.

 

[mongoose33]

You're probably fine. IPAs are best when drunk fresh, so as soon as it's ready, get to work.

One thing you can do right now is purge the filled keg a number of times to get as much out of there as you can.

When I rack to my kegs, I purge my kegs with Star-San as you do. But what I also do is feed the displaced CO2 from the keg back into the top of the fermenter to maintain a CO2 atmosphere inside the fermenter as it empties.

So even if the racking sucks gas into the keg--which it really doesn't do--what's going in there is almost 100 percent CO2.

Here's what that looks like; when I first did this the only thing I had which fit the vinyl tubing was an airlock I cut the top off.

 

[JonM]

But if you purge the keg, you'll blow off hop aroma in the process.

 

[beernutz]

The beer will likely be consumed long before you notice any oxidation. Here is a exbeeriment conducted on heavily oxidized wort 4 weeks after the beer was kegged where the testers couldn't tell it apart from non-oxidized wort.

IMO if you store the bottled or kegged beer cold or as cool as possible as was done in the experiment you greatly slow the effects of oxidation.
http://brulosophy.com/2016/12/19/po...normal-vs-high-oxidation-exbeeriment-results/

 

[LKABrewer]

Both beers in this experiment were cold crashed in the carboy, which oxidizes the beer. That kind of invalidates the entire test. I have done plenty of testing with oxidation variables, and can taste signs of oxidation in a beer within a week or two easily.

The beer will likely be consumed long before you notice any oxidation. Here is a exbeeriment conducted on heavily oxidized wort 4 weeks after the beer was kegged where the testers couldn't tell it apart from non-oxidized wort.

IMO if you store the bottled or kegged beer cold or as cool as possible as was done in the experiment you greatly slow the effects of oxidation.
http://brulosophy.com/2016/12/19/po...normal-vs-high-oxidation-exbeeriment-results/

 

[mongoose33]

But if you purge the keg, you'll blow off hop aroma in the process.

I don't think so. The aroma in the headspace is never making it into the glass. And if he purges early, whatever there might be will only be a fraction of the total, I'm thinking a small fraction.

 

[The_Bishop]

Both beers in this experiment were cold crashed in the carboy, which oxidizes the beer. That kind of invalidates the entire test. I have done plenty of testing with oxidation variables, and can taste signs of oxidation in a beer within a week or two easily.

Not always, when it's done correctly.

 

[NJGeorge]

The beer was kegged last night so Ill report back after a week in the keg to see if that little bit of air the racking cane sucked up from inside the bottom of the carboy oxidized the beer at all. I purged the crap out of the keg after racking was complete just in case.

 

[beernutz]

Both beers in this experiment were cold crashed in the carboy, which oxidizes the beer. That kind of invalidates the entire test. I have done plenty of testing with oxidation variables, and can taste signs of oxidation in a beer within a week or two easily.

The article doesn't specify how the cold crashing was done so I don't know how you can come to this conclusion since it is possible to cold crash with no air suck back. I don't believe the beer was ever in a carboy. It went straight from what appears to be an SS brewbucket into the keg.

I would be more concerned that both beers were apparently transferred into non-purged kegs via the liquid out port. However if you look at the follow up experiment where they took these same beers after 4 months in the keg and stored them at both warm and cold temps for an additional 100 days neither was noted as having oxidation issues.