Oxidation while fermenting

[Schwoopty]

Alright, Ill start off by saying that ive only been brewing for about a month now and have gone through roughly 5 batches, all of which done with secondary fermenters except for my current stout. I havent had the pleasure of tasting any homebrew other than my own beer and from what I can tell I havent spoiled any batches. Now thats not to say they taste good according to the style.

Basically, ive read a lot so far on this forum and oxidation keeps coming up. Whats the best way for me to prevent this and what type of equipment should I be using to get the best possible results. I dont have a kegging system (yet ) so im strictly at bottling right now.

Ive read that I should blow out the oxygen with a CO2 canister but is this necessary for the primary carboy since the yeast will blow out the O2 when its fermenting? Im going to start skipping secondary fermentation since it seems unecessary and only increases the chance for infection/oxidation.

And tips or tricks would be great.

Thank you!

[ajdelange]

I think you've got the basic notion down. There isn't much point in purging air from your primary fermenter since you want the yeast to have oxygen for growth phase and once fementation begins the CO2 will, being heavier than oxygen or nitrogen, blanket the surface of the beer. I agree that racking to a secondary fermenter is likely to buy you exposure to infection and oxygen more than it might benefit you in other terms (and I'd be hard pressed to say what those benefits might be but then I've been fermenting in unitanks for the past 12 yrs or so).

So given that you don't use a secondary that implies bottling directly from the primary if you can arrange some way to transfer the beer without picking up yeast. I used to have a racking cane with a little stand type thing (pardon the highly technical language) on the bottom that held the fluid intake above the yeast cake. Transferring to a bottling bucket is a great way to pick up O2 and more exposure to infection but not using one implies that you must dose priming sugar into the individual bottles (Primetabs or x mL of a boiled sugar solution) and this is clearly more work but possibly worth it. Filling into a keg and carbonating with CO2 pressure works well if you purge the head space with CO2 several times to get most of the air out. Then when filling from the keg with carbonated beer you can "cap on foam" to make sure there is minimal air in the bottles.