So I have about 4 1/2 gallons of an oatmeal raisin porter that will have been in primary for 3 weeks on saturday, and i was thinking of bottling half of it and then racking the other half to a carboy on top of some rum soaked oak chips for a few weeks, but the only carboy i have is a 6 gallon size. So my question is, would I risk any adverse effects to my beer if I let it age for too long a period of time in the carboy with that much headspace, or how long could I let it go before things would start to change for the worse?
My read of your post is that you intend to rack 2.25 gallons of beer into a 6 gallon carboy and age it. You will have 3.75 gallons of headspace which is a lot of headspace (lots of air/oxygen). Do you have the ability to purge your carboy with CO2 prior to racking the beer into the carboy? If so that is the way to go; the CO2 will displace the air/oxygen present in the carboy. Below are ‘answers’ assuming that you can’t purge the carboy with CO2: “…would I risk any adverse effects to my beer if I let it age for too long a period of time in the carboy with that much headspace?” Yes, you risk oxidation. Oxygen is an enemy of beer; it causes staling. “how long could I let it go before things would start to change for the worse?” I do not believe there is any way to accurately answer that question. Let’s suppose you decide to age in the carboy for three weeks. How much oxidation occurs during those three weeks? Who knows? What are the perceptible effects of three weeks aging/oxidation? A very mild cardboard taste or a significant amount of off-flavors from the oxidation? Would you be willing to purchase a 3 gallon Better Bottle for this batch? http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/better-bottle-plain-3-gallon.html Cheers!
This is the correct answer. Edit: Though 2.25 gallons in a 3 gallon container is a lot of head space. I would shoot for 2.5-2.75 gallons in there.
If you don't want to buy anything and have a few 1/2 gallon growlers and some airlocks and stoppers handy, you would be better off splitting the batch you want to condition further into those. You can then re-combine them back into the bottling bucket when you are ready to bottle.
Yes, racking the 2.25 gallons to the carboy was the idea, but like I kind of figured, it sounds like that is a bad idea. I'm not opposed to buying a 3 gallon carboy, because I will probably do this with other batches in the future (split a batch and bottle half while aging the rest), but I kind of wanted to take care of this one this weekend, since I will have a busy next few weeks with the holidays and family and everything, so I think I will probably take bgjohnston's advice and use growlers for this batch. Thanks everyone for your help!
“I think I will probably take bgjohnston's advice and use growlers for this batch.” That may ‘work’ too. You may already thought of this but please make sure to practice extreme caution in how you transfer your beer to/from the multiple growlers. Every transfer is a potential for oxygen ingress during the transfer from the primary to the individual growlers and from the growlers to your packaging vessel (I am guessing that you will be bottling your aged beer). The advantage of a 3 gallon Better Bottle would be that you would only have one transfer from the primary to the 3 gallon Better Bottle and then one transfer from the 3 gallon Better Bottle to the bottling bucket. If you use multiple growlers (you would need something like 5 growlers for 2.25 gallons of beer) then the number of transfers is 10. I would be uncomfortable conducting 10 transfers due to concerns about oxidation but this is your beer. Cheers!
Here is something by John Palmer : http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-4.html BTW, my secondary fermentors are better bottles , I do not use glass carboys due risk of serious injuries.Reading John Palmer I figured these plastic bottles are oxygen permeables, are they?
Esteban, for all intents and purposes Better Bottles are not oxygen permeable. Their coefficient of oxygen permeability is extremely low. You can read more here:http://www.better-bottle.com/pdf/CarboyPermeabilityStudy.pdf Cheers! Jack
I have 2.5 gallons of a strong ale in a 5 gallon carboy. It's been there for about a week. After 4 weeks in primary it was still mighty fusel-forward. I'm hoping that a little oxygen can impart some sherry-like notes and maybe salvage it. This beer's been a disaster since the day I brewed it, so I have no expectations. Just an experiment.
