Desperate for a solution to my oxidation problems!

FWIW, I am 'zeroing' in on oxidation being the root cause (just like you detailed in the title of this thread). Unfortunately I think I am in a similar place as you:

• I have a hard time rationalizing that you are experiencing excess oxygen ingress prior to the bottling step
• Everything you have described about your bottling experiences sounds copacetic to me

I will continue to cogitate but frankly I think I need a 'bolt of lightning' event to get past this problem.

Cheers!

 

@MiScusi , I'm going to sound like a broken record but I advocate for utilizing kegs when dry hopping beers and using CO2 to transfer beer from CT to serving tank and to bottles of bottling, via purging bottles with CO2 using something similar to beer gun.

I'm not sure if time, space, money allow for a kegging setup, but it will improve your beers very much when bottling I think.

My hoppy beer process; primary ferment -> CO2 purged conditioning keg on top of your dry hops with dip tube shortened 2.5", dry hop X amt of days -> cold crash x2-3 days -> transfer to serving keg & let cold crash another 1-2 days -> pour off first pint or two of sediment until clear -> carb through outpost to desired level of carb and then serve. All transfers done via CO2 push and if bottling just purge bottles with CO2 before filling. I use beer gun from Blichmann.

 

Everything looks fine here. As I was reading down the thought of "suck back" jumped into my mind but you assuaged that concern in the next sentence: "Didn't have any problem with airlock suck-back..." This may sound like a stupid question but is there any chance that air (oxygen) ingress occurs without visual indications? I personally do not perform any sort of cool/cold crash in my homebrewing. My wort gets transferred to the bottling bucket at fermentation temperatures (e.g., mid - high 60's).

Cheers!

 

I have been homebrewing for 20 years (batch 348 in a bucket). I have never kegged, have zero plans of kegging, and I have never suffered from excess oxidation issues. I have 11 bottles of an IPA that I bottled on 12/12/14 (they are over 3 months old right now) and those IPAs are still drinking very nicely.

I would never discourage anybody to start kegging if that is what they want to do. To state that kegging is needed to avoid oxidation issues just is not the case.

Cheers!

 

I feel ya. Quickest, cheapest suggestion I got for you then is bottling bucket with spigot and if possible get some CO2 so you can push the beer under 2-3 psi head pressure into a purged bottling bucket and purge bottles. I think that would be well worth the $75 or so.

 

I certainly wouldn't call it delicious beer though. My stouts on the other hand taste very much like what the final product will be.

 

Both of these stand out to me for the airlock "suck back". The reason that this occurs is because the AIRTIGHT fermentation vessel cools off, the gas inside effectively "shrinks" creating a vacuum. The vacuum pulls the star san and outside air back through the only available orifice, the airlock. Now it stands to reason that if you have previously had the "cool down suck back" issue in your good batches, and find that these three batches all share the same issue of oxidation without having cool down vacuum issues in the fermentation vessel, I would be looking for a reason why your vessel is no longer air tight. If you are dropping temps by 13 degrees you should see some sort of vacuum being created inside your carboy. I'm putting my money on a poor seal either between the carboy and bung, or possibly a crack in the stem of the airlock. those little cracks can be a PITA to see unless they are in the right light.
EDIT: most auto stores will let you rent a vacuum hand pump and you can test your carboy and bung for leaks. I wouldn't use air pressure though...

 

That process change will eliminate any possibility of a 'suck back' phenomenon.

Cheers!

 

Get rid of your auto siphon, those things are asking for oxidation due to the priming action, and since you're using it twice, thats another red flag. Also the suggestion to use the spigot in the bottling bucket (or to drill a hole to fit one in) will help a lot.

Regarding the color change, definitely sounds like oxidation to me. Before I started racking under CO2 pressure directly into the out post of a keg, I had an IPA that I shipped out cross-country for a competition to a hub, where we then had one of our beers sent back along with beers from the rest of the entrants to judge blindly. When I finished judging, I was shocked to find that a fairly dark IPA was mine; My beer had oxidized significantly during the shipping process and had some oxidation to the point where the hop profile was completely different and slightly muted compared to the fresh beer. The same IPA, not shipped cross country, won the IPA category in the Southern California Homebrew Regional a couple weeks later.

 

Most coolships are used for wild brews, I am not sure how they ferment using them and cannot speak for how they affect oxidation, but I am fairly confident no IPAs are brewed via open fermentation. As I type this I recall sierra Nevada uses open fermenters for bigfoot, but they aren't open to the environment.

 

I would like to add my experience with an IIPA (8,5 % abv), I had the same problem as the OP describes , except i didn´t find diacetyl flavor. My beer was amazing during 3 months (was stored at 40 F) after that it has turned exactly as th OP fotos show, from nice crysatl golden color to a hazy orange and hint of stale and odd bitter flavor ( not undrinkable but far away from ´amazing´). This beer was forcecarbed in a purged keg then bottled using a counterpressure filler(purging bottles). It was the only beer I have dryhopped for 7 days( purging O2 before inserting a hop bag into the fermentor) of the last 5 batches I have brewed and the only one that has suffered this problem. So, to me is very likely the problem came due the dryhopping. All of my hops are stored in a fridge at 40 F but I am not sure how fresh they were because I don´t seal the bags air-tightly, maybe there is a possibility they were not fresh enough, I do not date hop conteiners(mistake) either.

 

What do you think the fundamental issue is here with respect to dry hopping?

Cheers!

 

How long did you purge your bottles with the counter pressure filler and at what PSI? My first time using a beer gun I only purged bottles for 10 seconds at 2-3 psi, and in the end, it wasn't enough as all of the acetolactate in the beer I was gunning was oxidized to diacetyl from the beer bottling and gunning procedure (this was confirmed with a forced diacetyl test on a sample of the same beer from a second keg that was not gunned). I've since switched to purging for 30 seconds per bottle and haven't had the same problem since.

Dry hopping is the least likely suspect for oxidation, especially since you purged your headspace before adding the hops, unless of course you racked to secondary for your dry hopping and didn't purge the receiving fermenter.

 

I suspect it's the auto siphon, I used to use one when I transferred from the primary to party pigs and never had an issue doing it this way but the one time I did a larger batch I transferred the extra into bottles and they all had oxidation, and the beer from the party pig was good.

 

OP, I feel your pain, and this very same issue is happening to some of my beers. My fermenting and bottling procedure sounds almost identical to yours, except that I have a bottling bucket with a spigot and a bottling wand with a spring. I never secondary, and I don't cold crash my hoppy beers.

I see this problem the most with my light colored DIPAs. I brewed an 8% DIPA that had an estimated 5 SRM. At bottling, and for about a week and a half to 2 weeks, this beer was a beautiful hazy golden orange color. Right around the third week of it being in the bottle, I poured one and it was a copper light amber color. The beer had that odd sweetness that the OP described, not like cardboard or sherry.

I plan on switching to kegs in the near future, so I'm really hoping this solves my problem, but if other people are bottling lightly colored hoppy beers and are not experiencing this issue, I'd love to know what they are doing different to I can see where in my process this may be happening.

I can only think it has something to do with my auto siphon, or from the dryhopping, but hopefully we can figure this thing out!