TerdFerguson

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Great post guys...

I was thinking, what if you were to put the venturi near the kettle and before the chiller... would the 200 or so degree wort have a chance of sterilizing the tiny air bubbles before they and the wort are cooled by the chiller... Any stray yeast wouldn't survive the hot temperature, if there were several feet of hose before the chiller. I can't see that the oxygen would be harmed by the hot wort since there is no place for it to gas off to inside the hose before it would be cooled and in the carboy. This would also give the air much more contact time with the wort.

What do you think?

hammacks

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Aerating should be done after the wort is cooled. Oxygen in hot wort is chemically bonded causing oxidation. It makes for bad beer.

How to Brew: Aeration is Good, Oxidation is Bad

Now a system of kettle to inline chiller (CFC or plate) to venturi to long tube would be sweet, as long as the wort came out at the proper temp in one pass through the chiller.

conpewter

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I got this to work with the pump. I squished the copper pipe at the hole a little bit to make the flow faster there. I covered the hole with another piece of silicone tubing such that I can move it on and off to bubble or not (I stick the end of the tubing back into my boil kettle and don't want it to bubble while i recirculate to sanitize everything).

I do have to make sure I have a good flow going from the pump before I open up the small hole or it will spray out the hole. Also I didn't get any foam in my carboy, but probably because of the FermCap foam control. Bubbling away in the fermefreezer with Nottingham now.

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WortMonger

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Hmmm, I'm thinking I need to make another Venturi then, right after my Therminator. I just wish this would work into a sealed keg. I haven't tried it but it seems like the pressure of the wort inside the keg would start to back up enough to make the Venturi holes squirt. I had always oxygenated with a O2 wand in my grant before sending it through the pump to a sealed up keg, prior to making mine. Now it looks like I will be transferring into a open Sanke Keg .

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Beau815

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I am not good at buying the right tubing or drilling holes the right size, is it possible to just pop a hole in the tubing that i cover up when not needed? or maybe sometimes when the bend in the siphon isnt tight it creates air bubbles, maybe loosen that up even more to let more air in?

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jds

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That should work just fine. Several posters in this thread have had good luck with just putting a small hole in some tubing, although it works better if you have a restriction of some kind to accelerate flow past the hole.

Nothing fancy. Heat up a paperclip in a flame and melt a hole, or grab a small drill bit or whatever. It's a very forgiving gadget.

DeafSmith

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You need a constriction in the line at the point where the hole is located. This can be done by using a short section of smaller diameter tubing or by clamping the tube partially closed at this point. See this page for an explanation of why this works:
Venturi effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I use a short (about 1.5 inch) piece of 5/16 I.D. tubing with a hole in it jammed into my 3/8" siphon hose, with an 18 inch length of 3/8 tubing on the exit end of the 5/16 tubing. When I want to siphon without aerating, I just remove the 5/16 and short 3/8 pieces.

njnear76

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I do the same except my siphon is 5/16". So 5/16" hose, short piece 1/4" with hole, 5/16".

I used a needle to make my hole. It appears to make bubbles so I'm assume it works. The smaller hole prevents wort from spraying all over the place. I had that problem when the hole was bigger.

Mike

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cowstick

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I finally got to use mine. It was terrible. Wort everywhere. Huge dissapointment. Why? I drilled too big of a hole. I made a new one with a wickedly smaller hole. Tested it out with water. This one work well.

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CouchFarmer

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I've tried this twice, once by poking holes in the clear tubing with a sanitized push pin and another time by melting holes in a plastic racking tube with a lighter & paper clip. The first one worked, the second one didn't. I liked the first one but was concerned about using it too many times, it seems like tiny holes would be hard to clean.

Yesterday I tried using my auto-siphon ($10 at my homebrew store) to aerate, after it was done moving liquid I "pumped" air into the bottom of the carboy by lifting the intake out of the liquid and pumping for about a minute. It seemed to work well and it started fermenting in less than a day.