Dedicated brewers will know that beer exposure to oxygen should only occur before fermentation and not after
It's the same with food - oxygen will damage food so that's why many foods are packaged in plastic with 'oxygen scavaging' features - look at potato chips, the bags they come in are filled with nitrogen!
So if you are trying to minimize the amount of oxygen in your bottled beer, mead or wine, you may want to consider using oxygen absorbing caps.
The bottling process can add unwanted oxygen into the beer if you are not careful and too rough with your wort.
To remediate this you can do things like being careful with your pouring into the bottle and using a bottling wand.
If you want to do more than that, the bottle caps can help remove the oxygen that sits above the surface of the beer and between the bottle cap.
If you are looking to cellar or age your beer, these caps could help you achieve your goal.
Do oxygen bottle caps really work?
Now, let's take a skeptical view of this concept first.
Do you really need to remove oxygen from the beer bottle?
If you have bottle-conditioned 1000 beers and never had a problem, do you even need to use these crowns?
If you are intending to age beers or extend the hoppiness of your beer, they can certainly give your beer the edge.
The loss of hops aroma can be one of the first signs of oxidation.
In addition, the compounds extracted from hops will can with oxygen, which forms inert compounds that have less aroma and thus a reduction in hop flavor.
Bottle caps which 'scavenge' oxygen from the beer will help prevent or delay this reaction from occurring.
If the food production and beer brewing industries spending millions of dollars doing it, then it surely works.
If you intend to drink your beers quickly, you may not need them.
Oxygen-absorbing caps have an internal liner that once activated by water, will absorb oxygen in the headspace of the bottle.
Oxygen absorbing technology is based on oxidation or a combination of one of the following components: iron powder, ascorbic acid, photosensitive polymers, and helpful enzymes (amylase enzyme is really good for brewing actually).
Glucose oxidase is an enzyme that is popular in the elimination of O2 from bottled beer or wine.
The question you need to ask yourself is to what degree do they work and how much of an effect will they have on your beer.
If you have bottle-conditioned 1000 beers and never had a problem, do you even need to use these crowns?
If you are intending to age beers or extend the hoppiness of your beer, they can certainly give your beer the edge.
The loss of hops aroma can be one of the first signs of oxidation.
In addition, the compounds extracted from hops will can with oxygen, which forms inert compounds that have less aroma and thus a reduction in hop flavor.
Bottle caps which 'scavenge' oxygen from the beer will help prevent or delay this reaction from occurring.
If the food production and beer brewing industries spending millions of dollars doing it, then it surely works.
If you intend to drink your beers quickly, you may not need them.
How do oxygen absorption bottling caps work?
Oxygen absorbing technology is based on oxidation or a combination of one of the following components: iron powder, ascorbic acid, photosensitive polymers, and helpful enzymes (amylase enzyme is really good for brewing actually).
Glucose oxidase is an enzyme that is popular in the elimination of O2 from bottled beer or wine.
The question you need to ask yourself is to what degree do they work and how much of an effect will they have on your beer.
Some brewers think they are only good enough to give worrisome brewers piece of mind! Given they are only a few cents more per cap, this can make it worth it.
These caps activate once you get them wet.
How do you use oxygen absorbing caps?
So once they are capped on, you can invert the beer to wet the inside of the cap and they will stand ready to begin absorbing oxygen. This process starts a day or two after they first get wet.
>> Side note - if you are adding sugar to your beer bottle at a time, the inversion will make sure no sugar stays in the bottle neck. This is not an issue if you are batch priming the whole wort with sugar)
For clarity, store your brew normally after the inversion.
Many suppliers recommend to not wet or sanitize caps in advance of your bottling session or they will not work correctly. They’ll still close the bottle off from the air like any other cap, but the oxygen-absorbing function will be used up.
This does mean you can sanitize them just prior to use.
But that might lead you to ask:
This author personally no longer sanitizes beer caps. They come out of their bag clean and frankly after 1000s of beers bottled without them, I've never had a problem.
Do I need to sanitize oxygen-absorbing caps?
That said, if it is your standard practice to sanitize caps, then a quick dunk in some Star San
is just fine, as long as you do it just prior to bottling and not well in advance. This is because the wetness activates the liner of the cap.
But frankly, we've given up sanitizing beer caps and we've never had any issues - they are kept well clean in bags prior to use.
The choice as the brewer, is always yours!
is just fine, as long as you do it just prior to bottling and not well in advance. This is because the wetness activates the liner of the cap.But frankly, we've given up sanitizing beer caps and we've never had any issues - they are kept well clean in bags prior to use.
The choice as the brewer, is always yours!
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