Quick question about secondary fermentation

"The thing is, in order for it to be well mixed, you have to mix it well which will add unnecessary oxygen." In terms of mixing, the siphoning of 4 gallons of beer on top of the 1 gallon of water in the bottling bucket will mix the water with the beer.

Cheers!

 

Hey Jack,

I would guess there is enough DO in tap water to be a concern for a hoppy beer, considering any oxidation post fermentation will take the quality / shelf life down somewhat. Now for a not so hoppy beer, I concede that I have no idea if 1g of tap water into 4g of beer would bring enough DO to worry. I'm going to guess the answer is yes though based on the fact that commercial breweries (with the luxury of doing so) take the time / buy the equipment to produce de-aerated water both for post fermentation processes like this and for other post fermentation processes like high gravity brewing. High gravity brewing I believe, usually adds about 30% - 40% increase in overall volume. So in this situation (1g to 4g) we are talking a 25% volume increase which is fairly comparable.

While boiling water definitely drives off oxygen, I believe it takes a quite while....much longer than the standard "boil it for a few minutes to sanitize it" route. Possibly even longer than a standard brew session 60-90 minute boil. So I think the safest bet IMHO would be not to add any water post fermentation. Especially since this is a hoppy beer.

Regards,
D

 

Dennis.

According to Chris Colby 15 minutes of boil is sufficient to deaerate dilution water. Sounds easy enough to me.

https://byo.com/stories/item/237-blending-for-volume-techniques

Cheers!

Jack

 

I have topped up with up to a gallon and a half of water on a batch, back when I was first dialing in my boil-off rate and equipment losses. I used a bottle of spring water, and no problems resulted.

I believe it is legitimate to choose arriving at a target volume as a priority when deciding whether to make an adjustment, and I believe the beer will work out o.k. if water is added post-boil to get there.

 

Cool link thanks! 1ppm = what, 1000 ppb right? Much more than the 50 ppb breweries stay under, but the tip about the ascorbic acid is interesting!

 

Well, I bottle condition my beers and the yeast consumes oxygen during the bottle conditioning process. Since I don't keg I have no idea what that means for that process.

I suppose my suggestion to @Goodfriendsbrewingco is that if you bottle your beers then boiling the top off water for 15 minutes should both sanitize the water and deaerate it properly for you.

Cheers!