Adr_0
Gear Bod
- Joined
- 4/4/13
- Messages
- 1,776
- Reaction score
- 684
Oxidation is one of those things that affect a portion of the compounds in beer if you're gentle, or a heap of them all at once if you dump your fermenter from 2m into your bottling bucket. To (hopefully) clarify, whenever there is exposure to oxygen, a certain amount of the compounds in the beer will be oxidised and convert to another chemical: typically aldehydes or ketones.All.Hopped.Up said:I have been removing the airlock and cracking the lid (sitting it on top) and then racking it through a length of sterilised food grade hose to swirl the priming sugar through the beer as it fills.
Obviously, I try to avoid breathing on it or exposing it to any nastys.
Is oxygen really an issue at this point as surely it would already be getting a big dose during bottling anyway, no?
Last night I heard about a Chimay Blue that had been cracked open after 15 years and was apparently nectar of the gods. The lesson there was that, well, they might actually know what they're doing. There is also a school of thought that rough treatment of beer can lead to poor head retention.
So really, every little bit helps. Would you ruin beer by these 1%ers? Absolutely not: you might knock some shelf life off if you were planning on storing some. But IMO it's always good to have good habits, and if you're planning on storing it for a few months or even doing a 'vintage' batch then these things should be considered.