[denny]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

[klickitat jim]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

Or cornie gasket?

[Big Monk]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

Not really. The point was more about testing if the storage method preserved freshness rather than whether ingress occurs. In that light, it was a total success.

To Jeff's point earlier:

The trick of putting the bottles in a purged keg might come in handy for competitions. It could save having to rebrew for NHC if I bottled all at once, for some reason.

this could be a good way to preserve freshness for comps as well as a method to control for oxidation in experimental situations. By eliminating cap ingress, people would have a way to store samples side by side for comparison.

[hopfenundmalz]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

Not really. The point was more about testing if the storage method preserved freshness rather than whether ingress occurs. In that light, it was a total success.

To Jeff's point earlier:

The trick of putting the bottles in a purged keg might come in handy for competitions. It could save having to rebrew for NHC if I bottled all at once, for some reason.

this could be a good way to preserve freshness for comps as well as a method to control for oxidation in experimental situations. By eliminating cap ingress, people would have a way to store samples side by side for comparison.

I said for some reason, as I usually have those beers kegged.

[Richard]

I'm not surprised there is O2 ingress, but I have some skepticism about the experiment.

• To rehash another thread, how many times was the keg purged with CO2 before sealing? How much oxygen was left in the keg?
• I believe that O2 will gradually enter the bottle, but I find it hard to believe that enough could enter AND react with the beer to stale it within 90 days at 35F

As a follow up I would like to see different temperatures and different lengths of time. I would also like to see a more quantitative measurement of oxidation (not just oxygen, but the actual compounds that result from staling), although that could get quite pricey.

[erockrph]

Hopefully this isn't too much of a tangent, but I was dumping some old bottles of home brew about a year ago and noticed significant changes to my O2 scavenger caps over time. It was even more obvious in person versus this photo, but the older batches had a lot more/bigger bubbling in the cap liner. These were caps from 1, 2, and 3-year old batches (clockwise from the top). I never doubted that O2 ingressed over time, but this still caught my eye.



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[The Beerery]

I'm not surprised there is O2 ingress, but I have some skepticism about the experiment.

• To rehash another thread, how many times was the keg purged with CO2 before sealing? How much oxygen was left in the keg?
• I believe that O2 will gradually enter the bottle, but I find it hard to believe that enough could enter AND react with the beer to stale it within 90 days at 35F

As a follow up I would like to see different temperatures and different lengths of time. I would also like to see a more quantitative measurement of oxidation (not just oxygen, but the actual compounds that result from staling), although that could get quite pricey.

Thanks for volunteering! 

The neat thing about this is , believing and science don’t need to coincide for it to happen. A little google work will show you all the studies of cap ingress and beer staling limits.  Gas laws are gas laws.  Staling limits are staling limits.  After that it’s simple math for when they coincide.


We did similar tests last year (linked at the bottom of the article)with bottled beer that was bottled under a triple vacuum/purge cycle and saw very similar drop off, hell I noticed flavor drop off in a few weeks and the sulfite/DO tests confirmed.  Russ’s tests used bottled spunded beer so he had less oxygen in the bottle to start than I did, so that bought him some more time. 

Cheers. 






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[ethinson]

I'd like to see this test done again but beer tested by a cap piercing dissolved O2 tester, a really good one.

As far as the write-up goes, I didn't see anything about -unless you do it this way, your beer will totally suck- so... KUDOS!

That's a good idea, but it might not show anything, especially after three months.  Measurable DO drops over time as the oxygen reacts in the beer.  It creates the staling effects and the beer might taste awful, but still read 10ppb.  I've seen this happen over the course of a day.  Get a high DO reading on a bottle (100ppb+ is our limit).  Recheck it the next day and it's reading 12.  Of course at that point the damage is done.

This experiment was based on a low DO beer, but I'd be curious how low? Based on testing my own homebrew, a gravity fed, hand capped bottle, I'm starting out at well over 1000ppb.  We just can't fill as well as commercial beers.  I would think for *most* homebrewers, the cap ingress is certainly real, but the difference may or may not be noticeable.  In this case it was, under a very strict set of circumstances.  I think the experiment was very well done, just curious what the results might mean to the average homebrewer.

[Big Monk]

This experiment was based on a low DO beer, but I'd be curious how low?

It was bottle spunded, so zero, or very close to zero.

[majorvices]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

No. Ingress has been discussed for years. Most of us have suggested kegging over bottling since the early days not only because of ease but also because of keeping the beer fresh.

Since all the talk of DO on the forum lately does anyone know what the ingress of o2 through a corny keg lid/disconnects/popettes, etc are? I guess I'm in a position to figure that out. Might be a fun experiment.

[The Beerery]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

No. Ingress has been discussed for years. Most of us have suggested kegging over bottling since the early days not only because of ease but also because of keeping the beer fresh.

Since all the talk of DO on the forum lately does anyone know what the ingress of o2 through a corny keg lid/disconnects/popettes, etc are? I guess I'm in a position to figure that out. Might be a fun experiment.

It's just going to depend on the gasket material.

[hopfenundmalz]

is anybody really surprised that there's O2 ingress?

No. Ingress has been discussed for years. Most of us have suggested kegging over bottling since the early days not only because of ease but also because of keeping the beer fresh.

Since all the talk of DO on the forum lately does anyone know what the ingress of o2 through a corny keg lid/disconnects/popettes, etc are? I guess I'm in a position to figure that out. Might be a fun experiment.

It's just going to depend on the gasket material.

Not surprised at the values as Tires have a Butyl inner layer to keep them from losing air.

[reverseapachemaster]

I thought the role of the LODO process is to preserve the fresh flavors of the beer and delay staling?

If so, it seems like a beer brewed by all the right LODO processes should be better than a drain pour after ninety days at near freezing temperatures. In fact, you would have to accept as true that all bottled beer is drain pour quality in ninety days or less because even the largest German brewers producing whatever you think is the gold standard for LODO beer suffers the same bottle cap ingress. Their beers are not transported or stored under pressure with CO2. That seems like painting yourself into quite a corner.

[dmtaylor]

I thought the role of the LODO process is to preserve the fresh flavors of the beer and delay staling?

If so, it seems like a beer brewed by all the right LODO processes should be better than a drain pour after ninety days at near freezing temperatures. In fact, you would have to accept as true that all bottled beer is drain pour quality in ninety days or less because even the largest German brewers producing whatever you think is the gold standard for LODO beer suffers the same bottle cap ingress. Their beers are not transported or stored under pressure with CO2. That seems like painting yourself into quite a corner.

That was my thought too.  However we should never present any facts that some will choose not to agree with.

[Big Monk]

I thought the role of the LODO process is to preserve the fresh flavors of the beer and delay staling?

If so, it seems like a beer brewed by all the right LODO processes should be better than a drain pour after ninety days at near freezing temperatures. In fact, you would have to accept as true that all bottled beer is drain pour quality in ninety days or less because even the largest German brewers producing whatever you think is the gold standard for LODO beer suffers the same bottle cap ingress. Their beers are not transported or stored under pressure with CO2. That seems like painting yourself into quite a corner.

We need to make a distinction here before the dialogue back and forth gets distorted: Just because Bilsch chose to dump the handful of bottles he saved as controls due to the fact that HIS sensory analysis of the beer showed fault, doesn't mean that every other brewer in the same situation would have done that also. The main goal was to see if the storage method mitigated cap ingress, and to his taste buds it did.

This isn't an indictment of all bottled beer based on this single data point. It is true, however, that many commercial beers going through the distribution chain are degraded after even 90 days. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a 3 month of Weihenstephan, I just recognize that there are characteristic oxidation flavors happening at that time interval where I can get it. 

Cap ingress is a fact. The degree to which each person interprets the flavor hit is different. We should not conflate Bilsch's subjective opinion with fact. His opinion does, however, align with what many of us have tasted after bottle spunding, i.e. muted hop aromas over time, loss of the fresh malt flavor we try hard to preserve, etc. The experiment was conducted to test a hypothesis: will storage conditions affect cap ingress? In that light, it was a success, because it gave us a control to base further explorations on.

As always (it's frustrating to always have to end with this, but it's true), YMMV.