Stirring

[Kealia]

HerbMeowing summed it up perfectly. At this point, for a regular beer (not souring, not adding fruit, etc.) it's really considered a non-essential practice that comes with risk.

After your yeast take up the initial oxygen in the fermenter, you want to limit oxygen exposure as much as possible until the beer is headed into your mouth

If you want your head to explode, Google something like "LoDo brewing" (low oxygen brewing) and you'll see that battle lines have been drawn and discussions get heated quickly. Some claim that ANY oxygen post-fermentation basically ruins your beer within seconds. Other say that it's not as big a deal as the others make it out to be.

It comes down to a number of things, in my book:
- The type of beer you brew (hoppy beers are more susceptible to oxygen spoiling)
- How quickly you drink your beers (oxygenation does take time to present itself)
- How good your palette is (some people perceive things at much lower thresholds than others)

For a beginning brewer, here is what I would say:
- Avoid opening the fermenter unless you need to (dry hopping, etc.)
- When you bottle, avoid splashing
- If you use a bottling bucket, don't leave the beer out in it any longer than necessary (i.e. don't add your priming sugar then go watch tv while it sits there)
- Just be aware that oxygen is your enemy post-fermentation and don't do anything to expose it to oxygen any more than you can help it


Over time, you'll start to develop other techniques, dig into certain aspects of brewing more, and you can decide for yourself if oxygen exposure is something that you want to dedicate time to work against. There are plenty of other rabbit holes, too

[Spaz]

racking to a 2ndary means transferring the beer from the primary fermentor to a second fermentor.

back in the day this was SOP b/c of fears about autolysis (off-flavors from decaying yeast) and the belief it produced clearer beer but is no longer standard practice unless you're making a fruit beer or apparently when 'souring'. some would also do it when adding oak.

there's a small risk of oxidation during the transfer but not much of a concern if done 'quietly' ... i.e., no bubbles or splashing.

Gotcha, soo I have another question … if I make these wrong or do something wrong and drink the beer can I get sick? I’m not talking the morning after either haha. Is there a chance of getting sick or will it just taste bad?

[bpgreen]

racking to a 2ndary means transferring the beer from the primary fermentor to a second fermentor.

back in the day this was SOP b/c of fears about autolysis (off-flavors from decaying yeast) and the belief it produced clearer beer but is no longer standard practice unless you're making a fruit beer or apparently when 'souring'. some would also do it when adding oak.

there's a small risk of oxidation during the transfer but not much of a concern if done 'quietly' ... i.e., no bubbles or splashing.

Gotcha, soo I have another question … if I make these wrong or do something wrong and drink the beer can I get sick? I’m not talking the morning after either haha. Is there a chance of getting sick or will it just taste bad?

Fortunately, beer is very forgiving. There's some evidence that beer came smoky in part to make unsafe water safe to drink.

If you make mistakes, your beer may not be as good as it could have been, but it will be safe to drink.

[mashani]

> The type of beer you brew (hoppy beers are more susceptible to oxygen spoiling)

I will just add that there are a FEW styles of beer where some slight oxidation over time is actually desirable. It is for example what brings out the sherry like flavors of some types of sour beer like Flandars reds and browns as they age. But those kinds of beers are the kinds you do want to 2ndary and age for a year anyways.

And yes, fruit beers are a good case for using them if you are racking onto fruit and/or off of fruit. But in my case that would still fall into my 99% of the time stupid analogy. The few times I actually brew fruit beers, I would usually actually make a fruit flavored candi syrup (IE cherry candi syrup), and then use the candi syrup in my beer, which also means I would still never 2ndary it. The only thing I really would 2ndary are sour beers at this point. I might also use the resulting candi syrup on ice cream and/or as a flavor shot in a sour beer or other things like that.

I am not one of those crazy 0 oxygen people though. Just avoiding 2ndary is good enough for me.