Aeration technique for newbies...

I got to thinking...i have a stainless steel immersion blender with a wisk attachment. Why not use it to aerte my wort (after sanitation of course).

Any thoughts? Seems to really mix well and much "foam" is formed so I assume oxygen is getting in.

Should be fine. For my all grain brews I spin a plastic slotted brewers spoon between my hands for a few minutes while it's draining into the chiller, and I've never had an issue, so I can't see why that wouldn't be alright.

Last night i aerated by bobbing my copper wort chiller up and down for about 10-15minutes at flameout. nothing in the first 6-8 hours of fermentation, but came home tonight to it foaming over like nobody's business. good thing. i was getting set to double pitch.

fineexampl said:

Last night i aerated by bobbing my copper wort chiller up and down for about 10-15minutes at flameout. nothing in the first 6-8 hours of fermentation, but came home tonight to it foaming over like nobody's business. good thing. i was getting set to double pitch.

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This is what I do too but I still pay some obeisance to the possibility of HSA and wait until the beer is under 80 to do it.

I have never felt the need to do anything more for aeration as my attenuation always finishes at the highest parameters of the yeast.

Does using a mesh strainer for filtering out hops, etc. aerate enough or is there more I should be doing?

northernlad said:

Does using a mesh strainer for filtering out hops, etc. aerate enough or is there more I should be doing?

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That's what I do. Dump it through a strainer into my pail. Then I have my kid stir the living crap out of it for a couple minutes. Haven't had any problems at with fermentation taking off. Usually have krausen within 24 hours.

ChshreCat said:

That's what I do. Dump it through a strainer into my pail. Then I have my kid stir the living crap out of it for a couple minutes. Haven't had any problems at with fermentation taking off. Usually have krausen within 24 hours.

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Nice. I think my 7 year old might get a kick out of her labor being exploited in this manner.

I had crazy fermentation in less than 24 hours. I have just really stirred in the past, but this seems to work well. I may keep using the immersion wisk.

I use a y-fitting inline before the bottom 6" of my drain tube off my keggle valve, cheap venturi type aerator and it works great!!

Back before I had a spigot at the base of my kettle, my aeration pretty much consisted of dumping the beer into the carboy through a funnel. I often would shake the carboy around after pitching, but not always.

Nowadays, I just run the beer into the carboy through a hose and make sure it gets plenty of splashing. I still shake it around some after pitching, too, most of the time.

That's all I've ever done. So far, so good, so many happy batches.


TL