You probably don’t want to break them out if their seals until just before you are going to use them. They do oxidize. I’m not sure how quick or how much. All from what I’ve read. I’ve no experience or science.
Even in air tight containers, they may get oxidized sitting for several days. I'd advise to measure out on brew day. You can do it before you start everything and have it all set up and ready to go. I dig the hops out of the freezer and weigh out what I need into containers while the sparge is going. I sparge slow so it's easy to get things weighed and reseal everything back into the vacuum bags.
This is a great tip Bob. I had the problem you describe when I first started using my chest freezer for a ferm chamber. I solved the problem with this gadget. It is an analog switch that cycles the output on and off based on the position of the dials. I leave my thermowell in all the time. When the temperature drifts below the set point of my controller it cycles the compressor on and off until the temp gets back inside the set point. I realize that the compressor cycles more however since it is off > 90% of the time I don't see it as a problem. I do have to tweak it a bit for summer use. In the example below the output is on for 10 minutes off for 15.
Wow Bob, you may have achieved critical mass on this one... On ferm temp control I have heard a small fan can help with the temp yo-yo. I haven’t tried a Spunding valve yet either for pure CO2 pressurized fermentation and transfer. But I have one tip. If you are brewing on a hangover, start your brewing day with a Bloody Mary.
Ok so I start by StarSaning everything, then let the C02 flow into the keg for about 30-40 sec (should be about 8" of C02). I then add C02 into the top of the carboy (so there is C02 on top of the beer for sure) I then flush C02 through the closed system hoses. At this point I feel there is little to no oxygen in my transfer system. Is there any flaws in my process?
I’ve been keeping the temperature probe in a 1 qt jar of distilled water. Keeps the Keezer from running all the time.
I fill the keg to the very top with starsan and then force it out with CO2. This will remove most, if not all the oxygen from the keg. With the carboy elevated above the keg (I use my workbench for this) I remove the airlock and replace it with one those orange caps. One hole has a racking cane, the other has a barb fitting (barb is inserted into the orange with a standard CO2 fitting to connect to the regulator hose). I connect the CO2, leaving the racking cane out of the beer, I flush the top of the carboy with CO2 venting it out the racking cane through a hose that runs to a poppet valve fitting (black/liquid). The fitting on the fitting is kept loose so the CO2 can vent. Once I done my best to flush the top of the carboy, I connect the fitting to the liquid side of the keg and apply just enough pressure to start a siphon. Remember to release the pressure out of the keg or it will blow the orange cap off the carboy when you connect up to the keg. You can either lock the vent of the keg open or occasionally vent the keg as it fills. The positive pressure from the beer entering the keg will prevent air from entering the keg. It's more time consuming to transfer beer this way, but the beer keeps a lot longer, especially hoppy beers. It also helps to keep all beer from getting bland and having that weird sweetness that come from setting in the keg or bottle too long. I started looking into it after the 2017 AHA Conference and then I ran across this article from Brulosophy. I came up with my method to transfer from the carboy to the keg. Later I found that some homebrew shops were selling kits for this. It should be noted that the carboy should not be pressurized above 3PSI, I try to keep it to 1.5PSI max. Heres the article from Brulosophy: http://brulosophy.com/2017/09/11/th...ation-on-new-england-ipa-exbeeriment-results/
I do pressure transfers, had not thought about flooding the carboy with C02 by keeping the cane out of the beer, great tip, thanks! I fill my keg with C02 by connecting the C02 hose to the OUT port on the keg. When I rack the beer to the keg I also transfer it in through the out port. This way the beer will push the C02 out as it enters in through the dip tube
Two threads, LODO for normal equipment and then LODO for the people with money to throw at the problem?
One of the main reasons I frequent this forum is the lack of LODO evangelists. If some brewers believe that it's the end all and be all of beer, that's fine. More power to them. Myself, and many others just don't want to see it popping up in threads where it has little or no relevance. Not railing against HighVoltageMan!. He contributes some solid information here. Just thought I might suggest a dedicated thread might be a better place than this one in particular, given the intent I expressed in the OP.
A Good tip for new brewers designing their own recipies follow the KISS rule Keep It Simple Stupid. All them specialty malts do sound amazing but they all don't have a place in that recipie your formulating. Often times you can achieve the result from the selection of one or two malts given the right ballance. I remember when I first started AG brewing not too long ago the myriad of malts available was so daunting hence why I joined this forum. But most the time one base malt one specialty malt throw in your hops and yeast and Bobs ya uncle and Noseys ya aunt hmmm I meant grandad (joking).
I think there is a misunderstanding about what I talking about. LODO that your referring to has to do with hot side aeration and the "it" flavor in German beers, I was referring to cold side aeration. Cold side aeration is rarely, if ever, disputed. It has to do with quality control and beer preservation and should be a concern for all beer styles (especially hop forward beers). Any brewery that packages beer is extremely concerned with adding oxygen to a finished product because it leads to very fast spoilage rates. I do use some of the LODO methods, but I was not referring to them. If I were, I would have suggested using a spunding valve to carbonate the beer. I'm not saying that. Everything I was suggesting was to avoid allowing the finished beer to come in contact with air and as I mentioned this can be accomplished by bottle or keg conditioning the beer, since yeast is a very effective anti-oxidant. In fact when I make a bigger beer for long storage, I normally bottle condition so it keeps longer. The method doesn't require expensive equipment, but it is more time consuming. If people don't want to do this method, I'm totally fine with it and I understand. Sometime these ideas and methods are a little overwhelming for newer brewers. But I also believe that even a novice brewer should be at least aware of it and there is nothing wrong with learning about it even if you never use it. Use what you want, ignore what you don't want. When I first started brewing I would frequent forums and gleam information from them. I never answered anyone's questions because I didn't think I had enough experience and I didn't want to mislead anyone by some bad information. I guess that's why these posts were a little long, but I wanted to answer the concern accurately. I understand, I just got on my soap box. I'm sure if we had a beer together, the misunderstanding would be over long before the second beer. Sometimes these forums can be a little dehumanizing.
