Hi, my name is Manny and I am pretty new this. I brewed my first batch from a kit 3 years ago and I just couldn’t keep doing it becauae of where I lived. I took a class a little over 6 months ago and was able to do my second batch. After the class i set out to buy some equipment and I currently just finished pitching my 7th batch. Definitely a learning process but im digging it. Started with the usual 5 gallon batches but I dialed it down to 2.5-3 gallon batches. Overall I’m just excited to keep learning and brewing.
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Welcome Manny! You came to the right place. Here you will find a wealth of information, opinion and debate. Good luck in your brewing journey! It is a very rewarding hobby.
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Hi Manny! You can’t do better than to buy a copy of the 4th edition of How to Brew by John Palmer. Great info for beginners through advanced homebrewers.
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Hey Manny. Welcome aboard. I completely agree w/ Denny concerning How to Brew. I’ve been brewing a little while now and referred to it again today. I keep it by my easy chair. Great resource. I recommend getting a hard copy you can bookmark, highlight, and make notes in. I know my copy is marked up pretty good.
I used to brew 5 gal batches but brew 3.5 and 1.5 gal batches now. I like the variety and brewing smaller batches gives me two beers for the same 5 gal vol of one.
Cheers!
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If you’re only gonna get one book, that’s the one I’d recommend. I think it’s best all-around reference for homecoming homebrewing.
But we have an embarras de richesses of good brewing reference books these days.
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Welcome
It’s a great hobby one you can do as much or as little as you like. Take a break and come back to it, it’s all up to you
Here are a few tips or so that helped me out over the years
Go all grain. That’s how the big boys and micros do it. There is a reason for that.
Don’t try to “clone” beers. Try to brew what you like and if you get close to a commercial beer you like then great. If not and you like the beer then even better
Spend as little or as much as you want on equipment. I have my same setup as when I started. Simple cooler system. If you like to tinker the sky is the limit.
Don’t forget conditioning and serving. Just as important as brewing IMO. While I am frugal in my brewing equipment I went all out on my beer engines. Again it’s a hobby you get to choose what you want to do.
Lastly the phrase “Relax don’t worry have a hombrew” is the best advice I can give. Really hard to mess up beer.
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To the OP:
I have learned this lesson over and over.
Wort is made in the brewery, beer is made in the cellar. I spend way more time in the cellar than I used to. Attention to details make all the difference.
For example:
Give the yeast time to mature the beer. If it takes X days to ferment from OG to FG, give the yeast that same X days to mature the green beer. This can be done under spund to reduce O2 intake.
If you referment in the bottle ensure you take precautions to reduce O2 intake when packaging. Purge bottles w/inert gas, use bottle conditioning yeast, ensure the crown caps are crimped well. I use a Go/No-Go guage. I was surprised at how many crown caps failed w/my old wing style crimper (spoiler alert: ALL of them).
Some beers are designed for fast grain to glass (i.e. KY Common), but some are designed for long slow conditioning. Give the beer time to condition and/or lager. Some references recommend one week lager for every °Plato of original extract. That’s much longer than most give it.
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I’ll offer an experience I had. While bottling a batch a while back, the auto siphon had a problem. I ended up dipping the beer out of the fermenter with a measuring cup and easing it into the bottling bucket. I thought the batch would be an oxidized mess - probably a dumper. But it turned out fine. And I didn’t use bottle conditioning yeast. I concluded that the yeast fermenting the priming sugar is far more beneficial than I previously thought.
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Relax don’t worry have a homebrew
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Or that oxidation is harder to get than you thought. I’ve done similar things, and that’s what I discovered.
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This 
is the most important advice.
Remember it’s a hobby: keep it fun!
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Okay now I can admit, once I had a stuck transfer while kegging. I got frustrated and poured half the batch through a funnel into the keg. The batch turned out fine. 
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I can honestly say in my years of homebrewing I never had a batch that has gone bad due to oxidation. I don’t try to add excessive O2 to my beers I mean you won’t see me using a hand mixer and whipping my beer into a froth, but I don’t use Nitrogen backfilled gloveboxes either when I keg Here is my experience.
Do I minimize splashing when transferring to keg? Yes
Do I backfill my kegs with CO2 prior to transfer? No
Do I naturally carbonate my keg? Yes alway have and always will
Do I rouse the yeast from my fermenter to keg? Yes
Do I use different yeast strains when kegging or when I bottled? No
How long till do my beers last until I finish them? ~2 months
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If you haven’t got the "How to Brew " book yet look at joining the AHA. With a one year membership you get a free book. I know that is one of them.
Started brewing in 1996 and have gone through several brewing set ups and tried lots of different configurations. Just remember its a hobby and learn from your mistakes, other brewers, brewing clubs and your local homebrew suppy store.
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I’d like to see an experiment that determines how fast O2 is actually dissolved into beer.
I do close loop xfer from fermenter to keg, but what if I simply filled the keg allowing air to enter the fermenter vs CO2 from the purged keg?
How fast does that air entering the fermenter infuse into the beer damaging it?
I can’t imagine it’s instantly infused but who knows.
I would be very interested in this, too! I suspect there are data out there already, at least in an industrial setting.
Some years ago at HomebrewCon, they had a discussion on oxidation, and gave us samples of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. One was from a bottle that hadn’t been opened before pouring; the other was a bottle that had been opened and then re-capped. It was eye-opening for me, in how apparent the effect was. (it was also helpful as a way to learn how oxidation can manifest–I always hear it as “cardboard” or “sherry”, but I learned it also has a honey-like quality; I was much more able to ID oxidation in my own beer and commercial examples after that!).
All that said, I do a “semi-closed transfer” as you mention – I transfer into a closed and CO2-purged keg, but allow air to enter my fermenter. I am sure there is some impact, but I’ve not noticed anything major. I also think it helps that I don’t agitate or allow aeration – just leave the surface of the beer “still” and stop transfer before the fermenter drains completely, to avoid air getting sucked in and mixing with beer. My other oxidation mitigation methods are use of BrewTanB in the mash and at end of boil, as well as storing kegs cold. I have good results (even with delicate beers like a kolsch), or at least results with which I am happy!
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Carbonation technique I would imagine plays a role.
Natural vs forced carb
Forced carb vs co2 shake
Under the presence of O2 yeast converts sugar to co2 and water so it would appear natural carbonation would help mitigate effects of oxidation
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+1. This yr I began bottle refermenting my competition entries both w/ and w/o cask yeast based on extensive conversations w/ Fritz Schanz. What I don’t send off, I’ll force carb in the keg for comparison w/ the control bottles. It’ll be interesting to see if I get any feedback concerning oxidation for these entries.
Not judging just curious ( internet posts can be misinterpreted). Why do you force carbonate?
I understand I serve my beers differently than 90% or more than most people but prior to my beer engine setup I served my beer via CO2 over pressure and did the calculations for volumes of cO2 and line length. Even then I naturally carbonated.
So what advantage is there to force carbonation?
Again just curious
BLUF: same reason I keg vs bottle the whole batch: It’s easy.
I began bottle re-fermenting competition entries this yr, but that’s only ~1 gal of a batch so I have this remaining volume for personal research. I simply turn up the CO2 to a number on a chart based on temp and walk away.
I love the romance of cask conditioning and beer engines but I find it so much easier to simply turn a knob and pull a tap a cpl weeks later. I don’t drink a batch quickly enough to float a keg via Real Ale standards before it would go off.