Thanks for the shout out! You do an awesome job taking a ton of info and making it digestible :)

Thanks for touching upon this subject. I know it is a sore topic, but in my experience, should be the focus of everybody in some way. It took me 16 years of homebrewing to start focusing on oxidation and really learning about what it is and the impacts. I see it more as a pro golfer that tries to limit their loses rather than go for big gains. Lets face it, brewing beer is fairly easy at its base level. As you want to refine your product, you start eliminating negatives. Over time you learn that oxygen is a negative pretty much all the way through the process. 1) Let me start with the big one - HSA or what I would rather say HSO (hot side oxygenation). I appreciate the nod to accepting it exists. But, it takes some time just to figure out what people are talking about with HSO. It starts with the strike water. The strike water needs to be de-aerated to have any chance of noticing any diffference against a normal batch. HSO is about taking flavor away. So if it is gone, the brewer might not even miss it. A true low oxygen hot side technique is about preserving flavor that would normally be lost. The best comparison I can make is imagine drinking a fresh lager in Germany then drinking a fresh lager in an American craft brewery. They both use fresh malt, good equipment etc... but my money is that the German lager will have a different flavor. The flavor difference is the avoidance of oxygen on the hot side of their breweries. Sadly, it happens quickly. Once the strike water touches the grain, the reactions will mute the fresh malt flavors in minutes. Which is what HSO nuts are trying to preserve, the fresh malt flavor. It is delicate and easily overlooked. Like I said, it took me 16 years to get to the point and the last four have been spent unlearning and really improving my beers. 2) Big keg tip - change out every line in your kegerator, gas & liquid to EVA barrier tubing. Bevflex and other beverage tubing has horrible oxygen transmission characteristics. Your beer will die a not so slow death just sitting in your safe-zone keg. 3) Use active yeast. They will scavenge oxygen anytime it is around and they are active. Use this to your advantage like transferring fermenting beer so the yeast will soak up extra O2. 4) Spund/naturally carbonate. This ties into #3 natural CO2 is pure. Bottle CO2 has some oxygen content. So bottle gas will kill your beer over enough time. If you start by carbonating naturally, your only bottle gas input will be for little jolts for serving. This is a rabbit hole no doubt. It is not everybody's focus, I get that. We all love the hobby. If you want to learn where I am coming from, I would check out The Modern Brewhouse. It is a place of great knowledge and learning. If not, that is cool too. Once again, I am glad you speaking about this important topic!

I have been hard on myself for stuffing up many brews, no one told me about this, thank you.

Very informative - Thanks!

As a professional and home brewer here is my set up at home: 1. I do not care about hot side aeration. The dissolved oxygen in mash and boil are very low. Until you solved everything on the cold side, this is not your #1 issue. 2. I ferment in 30 l stainless steel kegs. A float tube takes the beer from the surface. The main fermentaion is with an open valve on the CO2 side. Then I add dryhopping and 200g sugar. Put on the lid, clamp and spunding valve. Pressure according to temperature and CO2 level. If not dry hopped I may have the spunding valve from the very start. 3. Cold crash under pressure. 4. If transfered to a keg, just clean and evacuate the other keg. Put a beer to beer line between the kegs and the spunding valve on the receiving keg. Put a bar on the fermenter. Let the beer slowly over. Adjust the pressure. 5. If bottling, I use a counter pressure filler directly from the fermenter. Flush the bottle, fill it and cap on foam. 6. I have the opportunity to check my beers on an expensive professional analyzer from Anton Paar. Few homebrewers can do that. I normally get oxygen levels at 0,1 ppm, but sometimes as low as 0,05 ppm. I have got up to 0,2 ppm, but I haven't had any oxidation problems. I am aware I have opportunities to take my homebrewing to a high level, and some equipment are expensive, but there is alot you can do for little extra.

This info is gold. Thanks for sharing

Great video! Great brewing space also, lots of character and potential for a cool bar area

Stale pale is my favorite style.

Nice lots of info. I normally don't bottle my beer unless I give it away to friends and relatives. Currently using my Vessi Counter Pressure Filler and also a Tapcooler Counter Pressure aswell for the onesies and twosies. Love them both. Both used on my Keezer.

Great video. I have been suffering with beer not tasting bad but going brown during cold crash. I had no idea it could be the cold crash itself causing that. Will bottle this time without cold crash and see if it makes a difference. Thanks

Lots of great advice! I keep forgetting to add the ascorbic acid and I'm not sure if I knew that it was supposed to go in the mash. Cheers!

Nice summary of a lot of info! I do same transferring fermenter to keg. Push out sanitizer with CO2 (at about 2psi). But I do then connect the 'in' post of the keg to the head space of the fermenter. That little bit of pressure is enough to get the siphon started either from the floating dip tube if fermenting in a keg, or thru the racking cane if in a carboy (I use one of those plastic carboy caps with a carbonation cap in one opening and the racking cane in the other). Getting away from carboys though. I like the new CHS 6.5 gal fermenting kegs, but I started using 6 gal Torpedo's with success at a lower price point. One other thought for you, next 'you might be a homebrewer if' merch idea: "You or someone you know has failed at pronouncing kveik". Cheers!

Very helpful, thank you.

For IPA, adding a little bit of metabisulfite with the last dry hop, and a little bit more with the gelatin (clearing) works great for me. Same for NEIPAS, without the gelatin if you´re hazecrazy. I use a smidge of metabisulfite with most of my beer after kegging, just make sure they´re cleaned up, (actually, metabisulfite is not the yeast killed many thinks, you can fermet stuff treated with it just fine - just takes a little more time).

TAB - Great video, as always. Thanks for the reminder about using Ascorbic Acid during the mash. I've been meaning to incorporate that into my routine and just keep forgetting. Also, I see you're sporting a different style watch...may I ask what brand it is? I'm a watch geek too and have been looking a strap version very similar to the one you are wearing in this video.

I will have to employ these methods with my meadmaking. So far, I've had beginner's luck. Stumbled into using sodium metabisulfite as a standard procedure. Didn't know I was doing the right thing. Figured I was drawing in air when I siphoned, so I never bottled the last bit that was oxidized. Have had no complaints, but I figure I can do better by using co2 in the bottles before filling.

Thanks for the video! It is a very interesting subject. I am going to be practicing and getting a process down for low oxygen exposure bottling for my next brew. I know that NEIPA are susceptible to oxidation after fermentation but I am planning on brewing a Belgian Tripel later this year and wonder if that style is susceptible to the same oxidation issues?

Been brewing for 2 years and just lost my first batch to oxidation. I appreciate the tips in this video and will take them to heart. Hopefully this was the first and last time I lose a whole batch like that!

I’ve been using ascorbic acid in the mash since you talked about it many months ago along with some other techniques, and haven’t had oxidation issues. Cheers! 🍻

For those of us who bottle condition, you advised us to lose the bottling bucket but you never explined how to prime without it.

Your video was very useful for me! Thank you! Ascorbic acid and magnets sounds like a great technique for me.

It's funny how our experiences differ. I don't keg, my bottling setup is basically a fermentation bucket with one of these starter bottle fillers, I have to move my fermenters between the sixth floor and my basement and I prime with a sugar solution that I stir into the beer prior to bottling, yet I rarely ever have issues with oxidation. In fact I had more problems with fermentations where I opened the fermenter and threw adjuncts or hops in. That's why I don't dry hop, which is okay since I am not super into IPAs. But if I ever want to make one, I'll get me a bottle of CO2 first. Thanks for the tip and cheers.

I use a bottling wand from a bottling bucket with no issues. I have beer that's a year old and sound as a pound (as we British say!). I must admit I DO depend on batch priming to prevent oxidisation. All good advice though and I may alter my practice to lessen the risks.

When bottling form fermenter how do you mix the priming sugar in?

Thanks for this content. A related but equally confusing topic is aging. It was always my understanding that bottle aging or conditioning in the long term affects beer flavor by introducing small amounts of oxygen(air) to the brew unless you are putting the beer in bourbon, whisky, gin, fig nectar, etc. What are your thoughts and do you think that you might explore bottle aging in one of your videos?

My favorite way of purging serving kegs is to use CO2 from fermentation. I hook my fermenter up to the OUT post on a keg, and hook the IN post to some bev line into a jar of sanitizer. CO2 goes into the bottom of the keg before going out the top and through the airlock. Fermentation generates huge quantities of CO2, so oxygen levels should eventually be as low or lower than the fill-with-Starsan-and-push-it-out method.

Hello from a very cold and snowy south east Australia, early winter down here, I'm brewing lagers under pressure in the Kegland all rounder with one of their spunding valves which they sell and I have attached a hose out of the spunding valve into the outlet of an empty keg, sometimes daisy chain up a few kegs and flush them with co2, then I run it through a filter into the kegs and there is no oxygen contact what so ever and I have never had any problems with my lagers, reuse your co2

Love your channel it's very informative. Everyone seems to agree that CO2 is the way to go with purging, but what can I do as I'm not in a position to use a CO2 bottle? I usually bottle most of my beers in plastic bottles and occasionally I use a plastic beer barrel with the small CO2 capsules used in soda streams with a pin valve. Would it be possible to fire 2 or 3 capsules of CO2 into the empty barrell, put a hose on the tap and purge the fermenting bucket and bottles as and when required. Everyone assumes we all have access to large CO2 supplies and sure not everyone does. Cheers Michael (in Scotland)

I remember not knowing anything about oxidation in my early days 😓... once understood and mastered it makes a major difference in the final beer, Excellent and thorough video!

Thanks for the video, Steve. I hadn't heard about hot side oxidation until recently and it has been standard practice for me to use my mash paddle to stir the heck out of the wort while chilling to facilitate more rapid cooling. This is usually about 20 minutes of vigorous stirring. Although the Brulosophy podcast reported that the hot side aerated beer wasn't statistically significant, I wonder if the way I've been doing things might be affecting my beer? In 2021 I used your amazon link to pick up the rare earth magnets for dry hopping and I went back to your link and saw that you've got the silicone sou vide magnets. Are the metallic ones that were previously linked not good to use because corrosion?

Steve, thanks for the great video. I have only recently heard about hot side oxidation. My standard practice has been to stir the heck out of the wort during the chill to facilitate cooling and now I wonder if that might not be such a good idea. In 2021, I used your link to get the rare earth magnets for dry hopping. When I checked your Amazon link again I noticed that you now have the silicone sous vide magnets. Are the metallic ones that you previously linked potentially able to corrode?

Making my NEIPA...I have been dry hopping in my bucket at high Krausen. Leaving the fermentation for a few days after my spindle tells me it's all done. Then I transfer into my bottles with a auto syphon, 4 batches later and beers being in the bottle no longer than 3 weeks I have never had oxidation in my beers.

Another little tip - when sanitising your keg prior to packaging, use Sodium Metabisulphate (Na2S2O5) as the sterilising agent. Na2S2O5 is an excellent oxygen scavenger and the tiny bit of steriliser remaining in the keg after being cleared with CO2 will deal with any O2 sneaking in through the closed (or partial closed) transfer.

Holly shit. Lots of info, great video 👍👍. Thank you

Let's get a donation train going!!!!

If you fill already carbonated beer into bottles with a counter pressure filler or something like the Beer Gun, a good method to clear the headspace from oxygen immediately before capping is to provoke the beer in the bottle to start slight foaming. Then just wait until the foam starts exiting the bottle and immediately cap the bottle. This way you have only foam with CO2 filled bubbles as headspace - no more oxygen. It is sufficient to provoke foaming with slight vibration of the bottle, e.g. by knocking with a screwdriver against the bottle or something similar. Unfortunalely this works only with fully carbonated beer. A further method to reduce oxygenation is to reduce the amount of headspace itself. Be aware, that there must remain some headspace.

I'll add that I've been using the Grainfather all in one system since about 2017. Some of my lower gravity beers, small enough to require the micropipework, the silicon hose that's used for recirculating just simply doesnt reach the top of the wort, so there's some direct air contact and minor splashing (the pump isnt crazy powerful) and to date, I've yet to have an oxygenated beer. In fact, going back to 2008, that is one fault that I've never tasted in my own beers. Something I've noticed though is that age can bring forward faults that may be minor or undetectable right out of the fermenter, or freshly in the keg. But 9-12 months later, something changed. I think this comes back to "shelf life" more than anything though. But even on beers that stuck around for a while, like over a year, I've yet to taste oxidized beer on my own beer. I've tasted it in various forms in judging at competitions and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot more in commercial beers. Particularly imports.

I find that when homebrewing, you can basically yolo your brewday and wont affect the end result too much. (Still keeping everything clean) But batch size and pro brewing you obviously cant.

If you if you dry hop at high krausen or at a certain point during fermentation ie a certain gravity above terminal gravity, you can cap the fermenter after hopping. 1 gravity point gives roughly 0.5 volumes/ 0.98 g/L of carbonation, if I remember correctly. i.e. If you cap after 1.013 on a beer that finishes at 1.008 you should get about 2.5 volumes / 4.9 g/L. This will allow your beer to naturally carbonate rather than having to force carbonate. Could save you a bit of your CO2 tank. Obviously only try this with a pressure rated fermenter.

I need to pick up some ascorbic acid to try out. Cheers Steve!!

Wow, what perfect timing. Brewing up my first hazy this weekend! For the closed transfer (we’re using a bucket fermenter), we’re planning on doing the trick you described and filling the keg with sanitizer then flushing it out with cO2. When it comes to transferring the beer from the bucket into the keg, there’s no way to hook our cO2 line to the bucket so can we just use gravity (purging the keg of most it’s cO2), hooking up a line from the spigot on the bucket to the liquid post? I’ve seen videos of people doing this but never have actually attempted myself. Don’t want any surprises when it comes to the transfer day where I’ll already be super nervous about oxidizing an expensive batch of beer

Hey @TheApartmentBrewer, thanks a lot for the informative content! Question: is ascorbic acid the same as a Campden tablet? If not, what's the difference and why would you recommend one over the other?

Thank you for the tips, if I don’t use a bottling bucket and fill my bottles with co2, how do I add the priming sugar? Do I need to use it if I do this option? Thanks!

I have an Anvil foundry and Anvil bucket fermenter I do 3 gallon batches. I’m currently fermenting a Mexican Cerveza and want it to be clear I did put whirlfloc tablet at the end of the boIl. I saw someone put a balloon on the stopper to capture CO2 then put it in the fridge to cold crash and it drew it back in. Do you think this is a good method? Do I even need to cold crash? Im still bottling and haven’t moved to kegs yet.

Regarding hot side aeration, our understanding is that hot side aeration is only a potential issue after the boil because the boil will more or less eliminate all traces of o2. So the spray valve foaming before the boil is a non issue. Unless you use it after the boil for some reason. And I’m not sure why anyone would.

HSA is something that if you can taste it and don't like it’s affect to the malt flavor, you can do stuff about it. If you don't taste it, happily brew on. It's really just that simple.

1 question about the magnet dry-hopping method: how long have you left hops suspended in a fermenter this way before removing the magnet and dropping them in? you said in the video that the co2 should protect them for a day or so, but what if i want to dryhop on day 7 or later? have you ever set the magnet method up a week or more in advance?

when I do bottle a few using my bottle bucket, I send co2 trough the spigot while filling. I then run a couple psi through the bung hole while filling my bottles. I use pet bottles so I can squeeze out the headspace before putting on caps. I have never had a problem using this procedure. 😁🍺🍺

Personally I never even think about hot side, but the ascorbic acid trick I may implement because it seems like an quick and cheep way to just make sure…

I made a Neipa a year ago. I did two dry hopping additions 3 and 7 days out. After it had carbonated, about three days later, it turned brown with a slight nail polish aftertaste. It's the worst beer I've ever had. I recently opened one of the bottles I kept, and the beer was crystal clear yellow (I guess because the hop matter fell out?) but still with the nail polish off flavor.

Hot side aeration is enough of an issue that guys like Vinny and all the hype haze houses all use de-aerated water as a basis in their HLT. They want consistency and longevity? I do too. In fact I want my kegs of homebrew to hold up longer than packaged pro beers - e.g. a hazy IPA that still tastes great after 4 months. And even though I don't do this for every beer, I've achieved this through all my LODO practices. How? I wouldn't recommend this for propane brewers, but if you're on electric it's actually easy and inexpensive to make D-A water. Just bring your entire sparge and strike water to a shallow boil first thing in the morning of brew day, before letting it drop to strike temp. You can do this the night before if you want, but you'll probably lose a lot of heat overnight, which may be wasteful. In my brewing space, my water is naturally at the ~180F strike temp after about an hour and a half after boil, with the lid off, so that works well for me. (Think of this as the "no chill" method) I've done the math with my wattmeter, I use about 1.5 KwH or $.13 to de-aerate my water. And I often have cleaning to do (e.g. fermenters) that benefit from the very hot/boiling water, so having that first thing is a nice benefit. I still recirc my mash for what it's worth, but I do so gently adjust under the wort level. Maybe I'll make a video of all this one day.

What is the spray nozzle you have installed on the lid of your kettle? (shown 5:28) I've been looking for something like this for my system?

You can use less than a drop of olive oil instead of aerating your wort prior to fermentation to avoid that introduction of oxygen. I've been doing that for the last 5-10 brews and they've all come out as great beers.

It’s my first batch and all I’ve got is a bottling bucket that I have to transfer into. We’ll see how this goes I guess

What is the best way to do a closed transfer if I am adding a fruit puree at packaging?

What about absorbing acid when kegging?

Watching this makes me think how German and Belgian monks manage to make good beers without any gadgets

How can I check gravity without opening the bucket? That’s what happened to my last batch and why it got oxidized

Do you still use ascorbic, given the video is a year old? What’s the longest a hazy has lasted unoxidized for you? Think ive only lasted 2weeks but now i have a conical!

Adding ascorbic acid when bottling prevents from oxidation too

Can I make beer vinegar? Beer on pizza?

Hey man, I’ve tried the filling keg with starsan and pushing out with co2, then hooking up hose from fermenter to out port in keg, and hose from in port of keg to top of fermenter, but beer gets stuck and doesn’t flow into keg. Has that ever happened to you?

I know I'm gonna get push-back, but hot-side aeration is real! I used to recirculate my mash through a sparge arm and I was always getting brown, murky beers when they should have been bright and clear (except hazys). I ditched that and went to a hose resting on top of a screen and now my beers are the color they should be; along with improving my mash efficiency! Win-win!

> Keep it civil > Homebrewing Incoming Battlefield! (Hopefully not!) Personally I totally disagree with HSA being a thing....at the Homebrew level! Totally agree with most oxidation things being a MASSIVELY overstated thing brought over from commercial brewing! Same thing works on the programming side imo, where there is literally no point using Enterprise Software Engineering tactics when trying to build a real quick Discord bot!

adding ascorbic acid to mash - the video showed a boil - which is correct

I'm done with those juicy hazy IPAs.. I brewed them three times and I had to dump them every time... So I'm back to my favorite IPAs; west coast IPAs.

No your not starting a fight....just read the German download..... Wow they know what they are doing.

Don’t brew beer like its wine, racking canes, bottling wands etc all dandy for wine and some beer styles but not hoppy IPA’s or delicate lagers , use sealed vessels, purge lines, wort should only be oxygenated once in its life, treat wort with kid gloves and beer should never see oxygen ever until it goes in the glass, most new homebrewers focus on “infections” too much which is rare with good sanitation practices, should shift their focus on not oxidizing their beer, its a more common way to ruin your beer yet its overlooked

😎👍🏻👍🏻🍺🍺

Apparently mash hopping is supposed to create antioxidants

Topic is still overrated imo ... Oxidation was not spoken about or b|tched about up until the NEIPA craze stuck it's head out ... and suddenly homebrewers became weird people. 😜

Good content, but the over-editing is killin' me. Hard cuts after every sentence (or more frequently, in some cases) make it so hard to watch. Good content but man, just let it roll.

good title avoid everything on this channel if you want good beer

I have watched all your video . If I can get your email I'd I have a couple of questions

Thanks for the video! It is a very interesting subject. I am going to be practicing and getting a process down for low oxygen exposure bottling for my next brew. I know that NEIPA are susceptible to oxidation after fermentation, but I am planning on brewing a Belgian Tripel later this year and wonder if that style is susceptible to the same oxidation issues?