Honey note in all homebrew

Well usually they are pale and light, so not much to hide behind. Also they are always sterile filtered. They do ferment cold to capture as many fermentation derived sulfites as possible but the container ship journey generally kills all of that.

I find cans to usually be notably better than bottles in the freshness dept. little to no o2, and zero light.

 

Do a search on Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures. It's the Law!

 

Will do occifer.

 

Great questions and I love discussing this.

Barrier caps where used.

Yes the Scavenger caps, have a solution in the cap to scavenge oxygen. Yes if they are sanitized.

I see @hopfenunmaltz beat me to it, but yes it's daltons law.

Pretty much any material used as a gasket will allow gases to pass though it. It the seal of the gasket on the surface and the actual gasket itself.

Take your pick. both have pros and cons.

I won't ever say you need to keg, kegs are far from impervious as well.

The best things we can do are, use active yeast when possible and keep it cold, stationary, and drink it fast/fresh.

 

The important thing to remember here is that, over time, gasses will diffuse in accordance with their own partial pressures. The total pressure inside the bottle may be (is) greater than the total pressure outside the bottle, but the partial pressure of O2 is greater outside the bottle than inside.

 

I would also suggest Fick's Law. IMO, the two together offer a pretty good explanation of what's going on.

 

Below is what prompted my curiosity about which caps were used (quoted from here):
"The Oxygen barrier cap limits the O2 ingress to (if you do not sanitize, as the sanitizer and water will have O2 negating any positive effects.)"
The mfg. description of the Barrier caps don't reference any scavenging properties, so it seems likely that sanitizing with Starsan or similar would be appropriate for the Barrier caps.

In case you were wondering it wasn't directed at you, but at those who are inclined to think kegging is the only way to go. I take a laissez faire approach to others packaging.

Thanks to all for pointing to references that help clarify.

 

As are a lot of other import lagers/pilsners

 

Which beers that are imports do you feel don't age the same?

 

The unpasteurized ones...now one could make the argument that bottle conditioned and non-pasteurized beers are superior...but not at the end of the unrefrigerated supply chain, imho.

 

Which ones are unpasteurized? Belgians? I don't know of any light lagers that are not sterile filtered (no need for pasteurization then, and much better on the beers as well).

 

Most export lagers are either pasteurized or sterile filtered (outside of Germany)

 

Right, but you said the German ones don't stack up as well to others. What are the others, I am curious?

 

Almost all other ones are better at the end of the unrefrigerated supply chain....do you really want a list of almost every export lager out there? (excluding the ones produced in the US)

 

There really is no need to SHOUT!

The live yeast in bottle conditioned beer is still active and has antixidative properties for many months. This has been studied and documented - the live yeast in bottle conditioned beers have anti-oxidative properties for the 6 month duration of the study.

I am reaching the conclusion you do not want to learn more here.

 

23 years ago I was hired to analyze gas production by soil microbes. In the design phase of an initial lab incubation experiment I tested about 5 different commercial septa and sealing mechanisms. I found considerable variability. I remember some red butyl rubber septa being among the worst but black butyl rubber being the best. But geometry of surface contact with the glass was probably more important than the diffusivity if the material itself.

 

This makes perfect sense to me. I would have been surprised if you had said the opposite.

 

Edit: Sigh. Nevermind.

 

German lagers are over-rated...unless you are in Germany or the Loooow O2 fatherland

 

Given the vehemence of this debate about yeast consumption of oxygen ingress in the bottle, and given my penchant for extrapolating what little biochemistry I know into areas where details matter, I am hesitant to put forward this hypothesis...

Yeast in the bottle are not dormant in the strictest sense. They are just not very active. Even though there is little if any sugar present for consumption, there are lower energy, low molecular weight sources of carbon that S. cerevisiae can access, and if oxygen is present, energetics would favor their consumption. (For that matter, yeast consume themselves when push comes to shove; it would be both logical and ironic if they use oxygen when doing this, to get more energy out of the deal.) This article addresses consumption of some of these compounds by wine yeasts (and true to form, I didn't read the whole thing, so feel free to tell me where I screwed up by cherry picking from the abstract). The article also proposes these reactions can impact sensory perception of the wine.

If yeast consume oxygen in the bottle, they must be using it to get energy, and that energy would come from carbon compounds in the beer. The way I see it, if such mechanisms are important in beer, it is a 2-way street. Yeast utilization of microlevels of oxygen via metabolism of 2ndary metabolites and similar may prevent oxidation of some important flavor elements while simultaneously impacting other flavor elements (not really different than diacetyl consumption; just at a smaller scale with less flavor-obvious compounds). It might be staving off your cardboard flavors by muting your maltiness. Could it be that some of the flavor loss we think of as staling is actually caused by yeast consumption of flavor? Oxygen is the enemy, and yeast could be too?

I have no idea whether this idea is trivial or flawed, and I have no horse in the race. Just trying to think critically and objectively about all of this and this is where it led. Let me know what you think. Try to be nice.