Ascorbic Acid

[dlowe1992]

Slow work day today so I've been reading through some old threads on here.
I'm noticing a little loss in hop flavours in my beer after 1-2 months in the bottle. I put it down to low level oxidation as I rack to a bottling bucket and bottle through a wand, so know I've got some air contact. I'm not too worried as I don't brew any fruit bombs / NEIPAs and have yet to dry hop anything, preferring a hefty whirlpool.

However, came across ascorbic and tried to read up on it. Threads I found on here seem to be from a couple of years back and ascorbic seemed to have been relatively new on the scene. Seemed to be some question marks on using it and balancing with sodium metabisulphate?

I'm bottling a Mosaic Pale Ale over the weekend. Again, not crazily hopped (6g/L whirlpool) but if it's as simple as chucking some in with the priming solution and it can't do any harm, I'll get some in. If it's a little more complex than that I'll just leave well alone.

Ta,
Dan

 

[MashBag]

Ascorbic acid is vitamin c. So no harm.

Sodium meta is for cleaning, please don't pop it in your finished beer.
If you want it's preserving effects use potassium metabisulphate

 

[An Ankoù]

Ascorbic acid is vitamin c. So no harm.

Sodium meta is for cleaning, please don't pop it in your finished beer.
If you want it's preserving effects use potassium metabisulphate

Why?

There's little difference in the "preserving effect".
Neither are very good "cleaners", but they are used as sanitisers.

 

[MashBag]

Sodium met will leave a twang.

Sorry bad choice of word "cleaner"

 

[JockyBrewer]

Don't put metabisulphite of any kind into beer where yeast is active. The yeast will turn the sulphite into hydrogen sulphide and you will have egg beer. This is told from experience.

Ascorbic acid... no idea.

Honestly I would look at tightening up how you bottle first. Certainly when I was bottling the way you describe I had horrendous problems with oxidation of hoppy beers.

 

[matt76]

Honestly I would look at tightening up how you bottle first. Certainly when I was bottling the way you describe I had horrendous problems with oxidation of hoppy beers.

Same here!

@dlowe1992 until a few years ago (about mid-2021) I used to bottle in the exactly the way you describe and had the same oxidation problems, probably worse in fact. I went round the houses but in the end decided there's no point trying to do half a job and made the jump to kegs and closed transfers, purging kegs etc etc etc. It's quite an investment though, but in my opinion was absolutely worth it.

ISTR @DocAnna was also experimenting around that time with ascorbic acid and other things so worth having a look at her posts.

I tried ascorbic acid I think, and also bought a small can of inert gas for purging bottles, none of which had any noticeable benefit for me.

I think the biggest problem is the bottling bucket - looking back now I think no matter how gentle you are it's still oxidation city. If I absolutely had to go back to bottles I think I'd be looking at botting direct from the FV, which requires having an FV with a tap and adding some sugar/carbonation drops/priming solution direct to the bottles first.

In some ways I think it's odd that we have dedicated areas of the forum for brewing, recipe development, ingredients and equipment but not packaging - we manage, we can and do discuss packaging all the same, but it's surprising to me that it seems somehow to be considered not as important, that it can be treated as a mere afterthought, whereas my experience is that it is every bit as important as all those other areas.

 

[JockyBrewer]

Same here!

@dlowe1992 until a few years ago (about mid-2021) I used to bottle in the exactly the way you describe and had the same oxidation problems, probably worse in fact. I went round the houses but in the end decided there's no point trying to do half a job and made the jump to kegs and closed transfers, purging kegs etc etc etc. It's quite an investment though, but in my opinion was absolutely worth it.

ISTR @DocAnna was also experimenting around that time with ascorbic acid and other things so worth having a look at her posts.

I tried ascorbic acid I think, and also bought a small can of inert gas for purging bottles, none of which had any noticeable benefit for me.

I think the biggest problem is the bottling bucket - looking back now I think no matter how gentle you are it's still oxidation city. If I absolutely had to go back to bottles I think I'd be looking at botting direct from the FV, which requires having an FV with a tap and adding some sugar/carbonation drops/priming solution direct to the bottles first.

In some ways I think it's odd that we have dedicated areas of the forum for brewing, recipe development, ingredients and equipment but not packaging - we manage, we can and do discuss packaging all the same, but it's surprising to me that it seems somehow to be considered not as important, that it can be treated as a mere afterthought, whereas my experience is that it is every bit as important as all those other areas.

The bottling bucket is a problem, although I think leaving the bottle neck full of atmospheric air is just as bad. The first and easiest thing that most people can do when bottling is reduce the headspace to under 1cm. Don't fill it to the brim as you need some space for expansion/contraction of the liquid/bottle/gas.

The second thing I'd do would be to secondary in a pressure vessel, either just before the end of fermentation, or at the end and adding a little sugar. This will give you some carbonation that will produce some CO2 and foam while bottling that will protect the beer - if you have foam coming out the top of the bottle when you cap it then you know the headspace is full of CO2.

 

[dlowe1992]

Cheers both. For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’re right. By nature of the process, I see no way you can transfer to a bottling bucket and bottle without introducing some oxygen.

I’m on the way with kegs… first corny arrived before Christmas and I’m sure more will follow! I’d like to get to closed transfers and bottling (where I do) from kegs eventually, but it’s a way off yet. Space constraints as much as anything (a two year old boys toys multiply faster than corny kegs ).

For now it’s a case of make the best of the equipment I have at my disposal. As I say I’m not seeing terrible issues, and take what steps I can (minimal headspace in bottles being one). I like the idea of a short secondary in a pressurised vessel @JockyBrewer. I have an old PB somewhere so will get a look at that and see what I can do.

Meantime, being inherently rather lazy, the possibility of a silver bullet was too tempting to to ask

 

[MashBag]

Does it also depend on style?

 

[matt76]

Does it also depend on style?

The following is all my own opinion, based on my own experience;

I think it does to some extent, yes.

There's a recent Experimental Brewing / Brew Files podcast (Ep.160) with Drew & Denny about Oxygen. It's worth a listen but I don't agree 100% with everything they say (they talk about oxidation on both the hot & cold sides, the latter being more problematic overall I think).

Hoppy styles - and that catch-all term extends to bitter at the very least - suffer the worst. Malty styles you maybe have more wiggle room - I don't recall the lagers or porters I made when I used to bottle suffering terribly.

But they will all benefit if you can keep oxygen away. I've area where I do agree with Drew & Denny is that oxidation is definitely a thing - the only question is how serious, how significant is it, how much does it affect the beer you're brewing?

 

[Davvy]

Yep...
I have had the same issues with loss of hop aroma / flavour when I dry-hop any pale ales. Yes I have switched to adding ascorbic acid (circa 5-6g per 15 litres of beer to bottle). Has it helped, (?) : possibly by extending the fresh hoppy flavour for an extra week or two. But within a month or so of bottling (and I am exclusively a bottler) virtually all of the dry hop flavour has gone.

My levels of ascorbic acid are not by any other scientific method but a culmination of anecdotes....suggestions are readily accepted if anyone thinks I am not adding enough ?? I add it at the bottling stage.

With maltier or non dry hopped beers ; I do not add, and flavour levels and character on the whole remain constant.

 

[dlowe1992]

I’ve only really noticed it on more heavily hopped beers, though I don’t exactly have a vast repertoire to base this on.

I did do a Vienna Pale that’s still good after a good couple of months.

In my case, I’m not noticing it to the extent beers aren’t drinkable, more a gradual drop off in flavour. Looks like I’ll just have to drink em quickly!

I can also use my keg for hoppier stuff and bottle less hoppy stuff, so for me not a huge issue, but one I’ll address in future..

 

[hoppyscotty]

I used it before I was able to keep air away from beer. Seemed to work ok on the basis I never had oxidation issues while using it. Started using after oxidising a few batches See below.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

This thread useful.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/vitamin-c-the-game-changer.698328/I've been using ascorbic acid for a while.
I put 2 grammes in the mash water, 1g in the sparge.
2g per purged keg.
I did use more before learning I was overdoing it a bit.

 

[DocAnna]

I’ve been away too long from the forum and trying to catch up. My module for this semester with the MSc is filtration and packaging, which has been an eye opener about oxygen concentrations and how it influences flavour stability in the final product. Ascorbic acid is viable at home brew scale - and I’ve written lots about it before as referenced earlier. However, it’s clear that ascorbic acid shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to trying to avoid oxygen pickup. A bottling bucked is always going to be responsible for adding lots of dissolved oxygen, and I think it just needs to be recognised that beer bottled from this won’t have the stability of beer from a keg and counter pressure filler. That doesn’t make it bad, just means the beer needs to be consumed a bit quicker!