Oxygenation + Wort Chilling idea

An idea came to me at the tail end of this weekends brew session.

I recently purchased a paint stirring bit to help mix my mash and potentially oxygenate my wort. I have an immersion wort chiller, but can't do whirlpool at the moment because I do not have a pump. My thought was to use the paint stirer to circulate the wort around the immersion chiller. It only occured to me at the tail end of cooling, but it seemed to have a very beneficial effect.

Keeping the bit at the bottom of the kettle allows for movement/stirring of the wort. Pulling the bit up to the surface starts causing agitation with more foam, and therefore I believe greater oxygenation of the wort.

Any thoughts pro or con on adopting this as a standard practice?

well i would be a little worried about hot side oxidation.

TipsyDragon said:

well i would be a little worried about hot side oxidation.

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I thought the same, perhaps keeping low initially and only raising for oxygenation when temp is down sufficiently. The Brew Strong episode on Hot Side Aeration seem to indicate there is very little chance of hot side aeration actually adversely affecting the flavor of your beer, whereas not chilling your wort fast enough could promote DMS formation, so it seemed like a good tradeoff.

I'm one of the many people who think hot side aeration is a phantom, boogeyman, myth....

I usually run mine on low speed (just enough to move the wort around) until it's under 80F or so. Works like a champ -- cuts at least 5 minutes off my chill time.

Once it's below 80F, crank that drill up to full speed and foam the crap out of it.

Walker said:

I'm one of the many people who think hot side aeration is a phantom, boogeyman, myth....

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In most wort jostling activities I'd agree but spinning a squirrel cage mixer at 1000 rpm in boiling wort is sort of off the charts. Run it nice and slow until you hit 120F and then let it rip.

yeah, here ya go



looks pretty darn good to me:rockin: