Simple Aeration Method

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Grossy

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I have read many posts here about how to aerate, from shaking the ale pale to oxygen systems.

The system that I am using produces great results with very little effort.

After you cool the wort down, let it sit for a 1/2 hour and settle out. Then pour it slowly but from a manageable height into the ale pale. If you want to keep the hops and hot break out of the fermenter just slow down at the end of the pour, and then ditch the hot break down the drain. Personally I keep it.

Then pour it all right back into the kettle, then back into the fermenter. This produces so much foam that you have to make sure you have enough room in the fermenter.

The kettle is sanitized because it was just boiled, the ale pale was sanitized with Star sans.

Comments and suggestion would be appreciated.
:cross:
 
It works, but I'm 135 pounds and I'm not liking the idea of pouring 45 pounds of wort back and forth.

There are lots of ways to aerate- from the simple splash n' pour to o2 systems. One of my favorite is a simple venturi tube set up at the end of a ball valve on the kettle. The ballvalve is wide open, and a piece of copper tubing with holes in it is attached midway to the kettle. That aerates like crazy, and still uses gravity and saves us oldtimer's backs!

Now, I have a pump so I just splash like crazy as it comes out of the CFC and that's sufficient.
 
Agree, venturi tube rocks, but beside that I still shake my carboys after aerating with venturi. Probably not necessarily, but as in every brew stage I try to do everything that can improve my batch... (I doubt I"ll do it if I am not about 200 pounds and 6.5 feet..)
 
Yooper

Does that technique cause foam/headspace issues in the carboy? I currently aerate by pumping air with a aquarium pump and stone. I have to do this in the kettle as it takes 45-60 min and generates ALOT of foam. I'm beginning to wonder if I'd have better head retention if I kept these protiens in the wort.
 
I've always just put the cheap stir paddle (sanitized of course) that came in my bb kit in my screw gun and whipped the cooled wort for a minute or too. No lifting required and cheap, however I'm no expert and I'm probably doing something wrong with this technique.
 
I got an oxygen set-up with a wand and a stone from William's brewing. It only takes a minute to set-up each brew day, a minute to run and a few minutes to clean afterwards.

I don't have to think about it or wonder if I got enough oxygen. I was hesitant to get one at first ($50). But now I can look at threads like this and not wonder if my beer would taste better with better oxygen and it requires no heavy lifting.

Aquarium pumps are nice but can't achieve higher levels of oxygen for bigger beers and cost the same as oxygen systems (although you do need to buy oxygen tanks from Home Depot every 10-20 batches).
 
Boodlemania said:
Where can you get the regulator for the small disposable oxygen tanks?

Most homebrew stores carry them. You're unlikely to find them elsewhere, as it's a pretty specialized item.
 
Lowes has the small oxygen bottles in their mini-torch kit. You could probably buy that, hook up an airstone and just turn the oxygen on. And you'd have a mini-torch.

But shaking the bucket has been working fine for me.
 
Yooper

Does that technique cause foam/headspace issues in the carboy? I currently aerate by pumping air with a aquarium pump and stone. I have to do this in the kettle as it takes 45-60 min and generates ALOT of foam. I'm beginning to wonder if I'd have better head retention if I kept these protiens in the wort.

Sure, there will still be lots of foam. It doesn't affect head retention at all. I don't have a Venturi set up, I just pump fast (LOTS of foam generated) into the fermenter and that works well for me.

I used to use an aquarium pump but found I don't need to now with this pump.
 
I personally get very little foam using the little tanks of oxygen, even though I had a TON of foam back when I used an aquarium pump.
 
I run the cooled wort from the brewpot through a cheap plastic colander lined with a clean grain bag. The wort gets a nice foamy head from the filtering of the bag and colander, plus the bag catches a lot of hop debris and some trub.
 
In threads like these, I often wonder why people correlate the appearance of a frothy head on top of the wort as adequate oxygen being dissolved in it. It's only evidence that a froth has been whipped up. There's oxygen in the bubbles for sure but they are on top of the wort.
 
Bobby_M said:
In threads like these, I often wonder why people correlate the appearance of a frothy head on top of the wort as adequate oxygen being dissolved in it. It's only evidence that a froth has been whipped up. There's oxygen in the bubbles for sure but they are on top of the wort.

I agree. When I said I don't get foam, I wasn't suggesting it was a bad thing. It might even be a good thing, if it affects head-forming proteins the way I think it might.
 
fwiw, in Yeast, Chris White describes the result of an experiment, shaking a 5 gallon batch in a carboy for five full minutes. One can imagine the head that would create, but it resulted in only 2.73 ppm dissolved O2 content.

By contrast, pure O2 injected through a .5 micron SS airstone at 1 liter per minute for 30 seconds resulted in 5.12 ppm; 60 seconds resulted in 9.20 ppm.

Chris recommended 12 ppm as optimal for most brews...

Cheers!
 
After reading some of the great posts here about high gravity beers and oxygen levels I found this great article from WYeast Labs.

Link: WYeast Labs, Oxygenation

Excerpt:

Homebrewers have several aeration/oxygenation methods available to them: siphon sprays, whipping, splashing, shaking, pumping air through a stone with an aquarium pump, and injecting pure oxygen through a sintered stone. We have tested all of these methods using a dissolved oxygen meter and have found that, when using air, 8 ppm of oxygen in solution is the best that you can achieve. Injecting oxygen through a stone will allow much higher dissolved oxygen levels. The chart below shows methods tested and the results.

Siphon Spray, 4 ppm, 0 sec.​
Splashing & Shaking, 8 ppm, 40 sec.​
Aquarium Pump w/ stone, 8 ppm, 5 min​
Pure Oxygen w/ stone, 0-26ppm, 60 sec (12ppm) (I read this as after 60 sec 12ppm was achieved)



It was concluded that pumping compressed air through a stone is not an efficient way to provide adequate levels of DO. Traditional splashing and shaking, although laborious, is fairly efficient at dissolving up to 8 ppm oxygen. To increase levels of oxygen, the carboy headspace can be purged with pure oxygen prior to shaking. The easiest and most effective method remains injecting pure oxygen through a scintered stone.

I'm sold, next purchase will be a Oxygen System. (although you just cant beat the price of pouring it back forth between the kettle and the Ale pale)
 
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