Wine degasser thingy with the little arms that come out

I this up from nthomebrew.com retail, this thing is crazy awesome. I hooked it up to my cheapie 1/2" harbor freight drill. I cannot believe how great this works for mixing and aerating. I mixed and aerated four carboys of mead in maybe half an hour with this device. I used to pick the carboy up and shake it, but that is risky with glass carboys. This aerator/degasser makes a cyclone in the carboy and sucks a TON of air into the must. I wish I had gotten this sooner.

I had to grind down the screw a bit, since it was a bit too wide to fit into some of my carboys, even though they were the same size and purchased at the same time, which was weird. It looks something like this. For some reason I can't find it on nthomebrew.com's site though I picked it up int the retail store ... http://www.winemakersdepot.com/Mixer-Fizz-X-Wine-Stirrer-Wine-Degasser-P491.aspx

I have used basically the same thing, looks a little different though. I have used it since my very first extract batch. Gets the wort nice and aerated. I think this is probably the best aeration method next to pure oxygen and an aeration stone.

there was an interview on youtube somewhere with Owen from Wyeast labs discussing aireration, and he said something to the effect that, without using a bottle of oxygen, you wont get any extra parts per million of dissolved oxygen beyond what you would from vigorously shaking the carboy for 30 seconds. meaning- you can use a paint stirrer or wine degasser, or you can shake the thing silly for a full hour untill your arms fall off, but its not going to gain you anything more than a good 30 second shake does.

Ah ok, that kind of makes sense, only so much oxygen from air is going to dissolve into the water no matter how much you agitate it. I had been just shaking my carboys up until now, but with the risk of glass breakage I've decided to try to not do things like that anymore. So with this device I can have it resting comfortably on the floor while mixing it. It's pretty fun to use too. I couldn't run it up past about 1/2 speed on the drill because the vortex would pick up so much the liquid would squirt out the carboy neck.