Anyone use a glass aeration stone?

My roommate is a glassblower for a scientific glass company and he got me one of these to use in my aeration system(crappy pic, I took it with my phone )



Anyone ever use a glass aeration stone before? I figure it will be just as sanitary as a stainless steel one, though slightly less durable. The aeration stone itself is about an inch long and is basically finely crushed glass fused into a porous cylinder which is then fused to some clear glass tubing. I will be hooking it up to some rubber tubing and then hooking that up to my roommates oxygen tank that he uses for glasswork at home. My new aeration system cost me a grand total of $1.89 plus tax(for the tubing):rockin:

I would be very concerned about it chipping or breaking, thus wasting 6 hours of work and 20/30 dollars in ingredients. It's an accident waiting to happen and when it does, you go "I wish I would have ordered that stainless aeration wand from Williams Brewing.

I was kinda worried about that but my roommate reassured me as to it's durability. Obviously I don't want to drop it though... That aeration wand is pretty cool looking, that made it onto my "I Want" list.

What about pore size on that glass stone? larger pore size=less surface area=longer to aerate. Not sure if it matters, but it stands to reason.

First off, maybe your roommate could cut the tubing part of it down to an inch or so, so there's less there to break.

Perhaps you could put together some kind of plastic "cage" to go around the whole thing to protect it from impact.

And, I agree about the pore size issue - it seems like something that should be quantified/standardized by the company, so perhaps you could find out?

The one really nice thing about the SS stone for me is that I periodically toss it in my pressure cooker to ensure it is clean. Aside from the breakability of the glass, I would want to ensure it could hold up to autoclave temps (and cooling) without shattering.

I've used aeraters like that in the lab. They are fairly durable and the ones I've used put out a pretty fine mist of bubbles. A quick dip in conc. HCl cleans them up real nice too.

EdWort said:

I would be very concerned about it chipping or breaking, thus wasting 6 hours of work and 20/30 dollars in ingredients.

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I brought up this point with my roommate. His response was "The companies that I make these for use them for experiments that cost way more than a batch of beer and take alot longer than 6 hours."

As for bubble size, he couldn't give me an exact size but said that the grade for it was "fine"

I've seen them used in our lab before, and it should work fine. I may have to grab a couple myself.

Funkenjaeger said:

First off, maybe your roommate could cut the tubing part of it down to an inch or so, so there's less there to break.

Perhaps you could put together some kind of plastic "cage" to go around the whole thing to protect it from impact.

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Yeah, I'm having him chop a couple inches off the stem. He wasn't sure what length would work best so he left it too long since it's easy to shorten it.

I definitely like the cage idea . I just need to keep it small enough in diameter to fit through the neck of my carboys