Oxidation Issues Almost Made Me Quit Homebrewing
I've been brewing for nine years. My brewing evolved from propane-fired BIAB to a 10-gallon RIMS and last year I decided I wanted to simplify my life plus brew indoors so I bought a Grainfather. (I'm pretty happy with it, too.)
My cold-side process evolved other years, too. Got a freezer and temperature controller. Started cold-crashing and using gelatin. Bought Fermonsters and added spigots. Moved from bottling to kegging.
But over the past couple of years, I was really disappointed with my beers. Hops just weren't showing up as expected. And beers were sweeter or maltier than expected. NEIPAs with 8oz hopstands and 8oz dryhops were just meh. I couldn't figure it out. More hops didn't help. I made so many batches that didn't meet my expectations and I even dumped a few. I tried all kinds of water adjustments and other techniques to improve my beers but nothing worked.
Late last year I kegged another New England IPA. It was loaded with Citra and it tasted amazing—like juice—when I sampled it out of the fermenter after the yeast were done their work. But when I soon tapped the keg, the flavour was muted. It got worse just a couple of days later—that juice turned to mint with a hint of pine. That's when I noticed the colour change, too. It had gotten darker. And there was an unexpected sweetness too. All-in-all it started to taste more like a traditional West Coast IPA. And not a good one, at that. Within a week it was undrinkable. Oxidation was high on my list of causes but after that batch, I was really frustrated so I walked away from brewing for a few months. Didn't bother dumping the keg, just left them on tap.
In early February, I decided to make some beer. I wanted to do something simple so I settled on a Pilsner Hallertau SMaSH. During fermentation, I cleaned my kegerator and beer lines then dumped the old keg. That old NEIPA looked more like a brown ale or a porter. So dark! That's when I knew it had to be oxidation. The keg had been under CO2 the whole time so the oxygen ingress had to have occurred earlier in my cold side process.
So I took new precautions with my latest beer, a Pilsner and Hallertau Mittelfrüh single malt and single hop (SMaSH) brew. My hypothesis was that cold crashing without accounting for the vaccuum that occurs and pulls in oxygen when the volume of the beer decreases with the temperature was the primary culprit for oxidation. So I jerry-rigged a pressurized transfer with some of the fittings and hoses I had on hand, pushing a a couple of PSI from a spare CO2 tank to my Fermonster. My Fermonster is ported with a spigot, so I transferred from there to a sealed keg. I previously purged the keg of oxygen by filling it with sanitizer and pushing that out with CO2. No oxygen allowed in the fermenter or keg.
It worked!
The Pilsner and Hallertau SMaSH was delicious. On the one hand, I was thrilled to be pouring a clean, light lager free of any of the staling flavours or changing colour characteristic of oxidation. On the other hand, it is a little embarrassing how easy it was to resolve my issues, at least when I figured it out. And it's humbling to admit one of the simplest beers I've ever brewed also happens to be among my best.
My cold-side process evolved other years, too. Got a freezer and temperature controller. Started cold-crashing and using gelatin. Bought Fermonsters and added spigots. Moved from bottling to kegging.
But over the past couple of years, I was really disappointed with my beers. Hops just weren't showing up as expected. And beers were sweeter or maltier than expected. NEIPAs with 8oz hopstands and 8oz dryhops were just meh. I couldn't figure it out. More hops didn't help. I made so many batches that didn't meet my expectations and I even dumped a few. I tried all kinds of water adjustments and other techniques to improve my beers but nothing worked.
Late last year I kegged another New England IPA. It was loaded with Citra and it tasted amazing—like juice—when I sampled it out of the fermenter after the yeast were done their work. But when I soon tapped the keg, the flavour was muted. It got worse just a couple of days later—that juice turned to mint with a hint of pine. That's when I noticed the colour change, too. It had gotten darker. And there was an unexpected sweetness too. All-in-all it started to taste more like a traditional West Coast IPA. And not a good one, at that. Within a week it was undrinkable. Oxidation was high on my list of causes but after that batch, I was really frustrated so I walked away from brewing for a few months. Didn't bother dumping the keg, just left them on tap.
In early February, I decided to make some beer. I wanted to do something simple so I settled on a Pilsner Hallertau SMaSH. During fermentation, I cleaned my kegerator and beer lines then dumped the old keg. That old NEIPA looked more like a brown ale or a porter. So dark! That's when I knew it had to be oxidation. The keg had been under CO2 the whole time so the oxygen ingress had to have occurred earlier in my cold side process.
So I took new precautions with my latest beer, a Pilsner and Hallertau Mittelfrüh single malt and single hop (SMaSH) brew. My hypothesis was that cold crashing without accounting for the vaccuum that occurs and pulls in oxygen when the volume of the beer decreases with the temperature was the primary culprit for oxidation. So I jerry-rigged a pressurized transfer with some of the fittings and hoses I had on hand, pushing a a couple of PSI from a spare CO2 tank to my Fermonster. My Fermonster is ported with a spigot, so I transferred from there to a sealed keg. I previously purged the keg of oxygen by filling it with sanitizer and pushing that out with CO2. No oxygen allowed in the fermenter or keg.
It worked!
The Pilsner and Hallertau SMaSH was delicious. On the one hand, I was thrilled to be pouring a clean, light lager free of any of the staling flavours or changing colour characteristic of oxidation. On the other hand, it is a little embarrassing how easy it was to resolve my issues, at least when I figured it out. And it's humbling to admit one of the simplest beers I've ever brewed also happens to be among my best.
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