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Lowering Oxygen in your Brewing

I’ve been reading about a new set of methodologies evolving in the brewing scene to greatly reduce the amount of oxygen ‘damage’ to your beer. This week we talk a little about the extremes some folks are employing as well as discussing some more practical ways for lowering oxygen in your brewing.

Boiling your mash water, CO2 infusing your mash tun and close transferring to the kettle are just a few of the steps being taken by some brewers to lower the amount of O2 in their beer. Claiming that the beers get better or have better shelf stability. I don’t know much about those things and it will certainly be interesting to see how this technique continues to evolve. Only in home brewing I suppose.

For me I am mildly concerned about O2 pick up in my process. The main area, I think at least, to be concerned with the O2 issue is post ferment. I’ve been thinking about trying some closed transfer set ups that I might try. I have in the past used CO2 to push the beer out of my carboy and up a fixed racking cane out of the carboy cap. The only real issue to watch here is to not over pressurize a glass carboy as they aren’t intended to hold pressure. However, the carboy cap is likely to pop off before that happens… thankfully.

Another way to go to closed transfer is to ferment in a corny keg. Using a trimmed dip tube you should be able to transfer well settled beer without too much of the yeast cake to another keg. If you use a black to black jumper set up you don’t even need to open the keg of fermented beer. I have read about filling a receiver keg full of sanitizer and then pushing it out with CO2 to completely purge it of O2. Using the gas out connector in a pitch of water you create a breathable one way airlock so that as the keg fills the gas can escape. Using corny kegs in this manner greatly reduced many other parts of the transfer process like racking cans etc etc because the are built into the kegs themselves. The only sacrifice is a smaller batch of beer.

Have you experimented with closed transfer of finished beer? Ever fermented in a corny keg?
Let us know about it!!!

CHEERS!

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5 Comments

  1. Chris

    I have a Blichmann conical and close transfer with C02. I do use carboys though the odd time. I transfer with a beverage line which is bigger than my usual beverage line. Being heavier, I can get it to the bottom of my keg and slowly transfer. I guess I do get some 02 in there, but I just try to be careful and do it slow. I’m not changing how I do it, too old and stubborn for that.

  2. Hey Dudes! Love to see some talk about Oxygen!

    We tried to take the muss and fuss out of low oxygen brewing and list some facts and pointers. Check out http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com we are happy to help and answer any questions!

    Bryan

  3. If you’re filling a keg from the bottom up why purge it with co2? Won’t the liquid push most o2 out of the keg?

  4. Jake

    Past hoppy beers I’ve done without closed xfer had outstanding hop flavor/aroma that would almost disappear after ~2 weeks. I’ve done two batches recently with a similar method to Ed Coffey’s (link below), and the hops stick around for much longer. Definitely worth the extra effort.

    http://www.alesoftheriverwards.com/2015/09/how-i-dry-hop-maximizing-aromas-on.html?m=1

  5. Interesting Jake.

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