[Matthew Parcher]

I've heard for a long time that oxidation can ruin a good beer, but here is the thing:

Everytime I put a beer into secondary, I have to carry a (very heavy) carboy from the back of my house to the garage. The beer always sloshes around a bit. When I use my auto siphon to rack to the secondary carboy it seems I always have some air/bubbles in the line (sometimes more than a few). I'm just curious: If this isn't enough to ruin my beer, what would it take?

I've never tasted any off flavors (cardboard, papery, sherry-like), so I'm curious. Maybe I just don't recognize the off flavors? Sometimes the amount of sloshing I do makes me a little nervous, but I've never experienced these issues that I know of!

Cheers!

[denny]

Oxidation often doesn't take the form of the traditional descriptions.  My personal method is to do what I can to avoid it and then not worry about it.

[BrewBama]

Another requirement to reveal any potential damage by introduction of O2 is time. If you are consuming the beer quickly after a potential O2 event you won’t realize the possible damage.

Many have forgone the secondary for the reason you give about potential O2 pickup. I rarely transfer a beer from primary to secondary. Instead, I package straight from the fermenter.


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[jeffy]

Some of the first signs of oxidation are the loss of bright, clean flavors and the development of duller flavors as well as darkening of the beer color.  Loss of hop aroma is another indicator.  Keeping the beer cold helps to delay this.  Like Denny BrewBama say, do what you can to avoid it and drink the beer fresh.  That's what I do.

[Matthew Parcher]

Thanks for the replies. This is all helpful.

Cheers!

[mabrungard]

Sloshing around in your closed fermenter should not introduce any oxidation. The headspace should be oxygen-free.

The place to worry about oxygen is during the transfer. If you happen to have a CO2 tank and can feed it into the closed top of the fermenter while you draw off the beer, the beer would avoid that source.

[goose]

Another requirement to reveal any potential damage by introduction of O2 is time. If you are consuming the beer quickly after a potential O2 event you won’t realize the possible damage.

Many have forgone the secondary for the reason you give about potential O2 pickup. I rarely transfer a beer from primary to secondary. Instead, I package straight from the fermenter.


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I usually do what Brewbama does.  However, with many highly dry hopped beers it is a real PITA to keg from my conical since the in-line screen keeps plugging up with hops.  For that reason, I am reluctantly going back to a secondary (i.e. brite tank/carboy) for dry hopping and packaging kind of like what Denny suggested in another thread that I started.  I religiously purge the carboy with CO2 before transferring and take great care when filling them to avoid any splashing.  That is the best I can do and it has always worked for me before.  I never really get notice hints of oxidation in the beers that I package this way even after a month or two.
I have given some thought to using a hop bag for dry hopping in the conical to prevent clogging my inline screen. But I don't really want to open the fermenter to add the hop bag to avoid any possible contamination issues.

All my other beers are kegged directly from the conical after "burping" the yeast out of the dump port on the bottom.

Just my .02

[hopfenundmalz]

Some of the first signs of oxidation are the loss of bright, clean flavors and the development of duller flavors as well as darkening of the beer color.  Loss of hop aroma is another indicator.  Keeping the beer cold helps to delay this.  Like Denny BrewBama say, do what you can to avoid it and drink the beer fresh.  That's what I do.

This ^^^^^^

Once you recognize the early signs you will find them often. This why the best beer is often at the brewery, can't get fresher than that.