Aerating your wort

Some folks go through a bit of extra work/time to ensure they have aerated their wort while I imagine some others just give it a good shake and go. Of course, both make beer.

How important do you think it is?
How effective do you think most methods are? Read below on my take on air stones...if I'm wrong please tell me so.

I do know this but I'm not sure how much it applies to beer:
Those air stones in aquariums don't really aerate the water very much...almost all the oxygen in the water gets there from surface agitation (which of course the air stones cause...but those tiny bubbles are not what's doing the heavy lifting regarding oxygenating the water...it's almost all at the surface). So I'm not sure how much more effective an air stone is than just bubbling air out of PVC tubing.

So with that in mind...my method of aeration has always been to take a wire whisk and boil it to sanitize it...then whip the **** out of the cooled wort (never warm or hot). It gets very foamy but it goes straight into the carboy after aeration. This always gets me fast starts (within hours) and almost always blowoffs (within a half-day). That wasn't the case before I aerated 'excessively'. Anybody see any flaw in this method? I try to keep the area/room calm with little activity (dog is def outside) so as to reduce airborne dusts/etc.

So what's your take on aerating your wort? Mine is that you CAN'T over-do it but you could easily under-do it and the yeast really like/need it.

I always pitch my yeast then give it a good 10-15 second stir with a sanitized spoon, normally get lift off in 12-18 hours...

I use an agitator rod to aerate my wort.

The Stainless Steel Mix Stir :: Midwest Supplies Homebrewing and Winemaking Supplies

It works well. I just have to be careful to not scratch my bucket.

I will just pour my wort into the fermenter and top it off with the sink sprayer of cold water. Never had a stuck fermentation or an infection.

I pour vigoursly into fermenter and then stir with spoon until I get tired basically. Why bring up air stones?

Oxygen is extremely important for yeast health and growth, so you most certainly need to aerate your wort effectively in whatever manner you deem appropriate. I use a Venturi tube at the bottom of my siphon, which is nothing more than a piece of plastic tubing with holes drilled into it. This pulls air into the wort column as it passes, introducing oxygen.

It is in fact possible to over-oxygenate; however, it's rather difficult to do!

I'm just a noob who is looking for answers to this too. Seems to me that aerating with an air stone and an aquarium pump takes time - various places say 5 mins to 1 hour. Given my experience in the lab aerating media for bacteria, I'd think the latter end of that would be needed for 5 gallons. Bubbling with O2 seems better to me.

The air stone (2 micron) breaks the stream of gas down into tiny bubbles, increasing the surface area, speeding up diffusion of the oxygen into the liquid vs just bubbling in from a tube with no stone.

Whisking might be a pretty good option - its a great way to get air into cream or egg whites... seems like to get the whole 5 gallons aerated it would take quite a while though? Do you have to shake it up once in a while too as you whisk?

Anyone ever taken a dissolved oxygen tension meter home to check on the efficiencies of the various methods?

Since my IC is already in the wort...that's my #1 tool for frothing up the wort:

This 1.116 Barley Wine got down to 1.029. 75% attenuation on a 1116 beer is good by me.

BierMuncher said:

Since my IC is already in the wort...that's my #1 tool for frothing up the wort:

This 1.116 Barley Wine got down to 1.029. 75% attenuation on a 1116 beer is good by me.

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Interesting idea. How do you this exactly? Just stir it up like crazy?

I shake the hell out of my Better Bottle before and after pitching the yeast. While I've had some slow starts, I have yet to have a stuck fermentation.

njnear76 said:

Interesting idea. How do you this exactly? Just stir it up like crazy?

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It's a vigorous up and down action. Up & down, up & down, up & down...until BAM...you have foam.

Then I usually have a cigarette.

BierMuncher said:

It's a vigorous up and down action. Up & down, up & down, up & down...until BAM...you have foam.

Then I usually have a cigarette.

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Hmmmm.... I guess I would need a bigger pot to attempt this.

i pour my brew kettle through a collander into a bucket, drain the hops, toss, and pour into another bucket, through collander, than back again. usually lose a pint to froth overflowing.
my last ferment took off in four hours, and my blowoff keeps cloggin. i would say this areates enough, and takes maybe 30 seconds.

I do the back and forth between a bucket and the brew pot. It kills the back.

BierMuncher said:

It's a vigorous up and down action. Up & down, up & down, up & down...until BAM...you have foam.

Then I usually have a cigarette.

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I guess then, at that point, it's too late for the protein rest.

Why bring up air stones?

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Because many people use them. I did for a while and I still have the SS air stone (or diffuser...whatever it's called) and aquarium pump but it does take a while and I felt the wire whisk was just as effective if not more so and faster.

Bubbling with O2 seems better to me.

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That's supposedly the best method but I've also read to just bubble O2 through PVC tubing and forget the stone because the stone is only marginally more effective. My understanding is that the 'tiny bubbles and increased surface area' is greatly over-rated and the majority of aeration still comes from surface agitation (I know it does in aquariums but those aren't 2 micron stones either). But I'm still not sure and more than willing to be proven wrong.

FWIW, I use the wire whisk to get it aerated as much as I can...then I pour it through a strainer and into the fermenter which aerates it a bit more...then I shake the hell out of the carboy...then I pitch and shake it again.


Huh-huh...he said "2 micron stones"...huh-huh.

Biermuncher to boiler pot: Was it good for you?

http://www.bjcp.org/cep/WyeastYeastLife.pdf

I for one will continue to put my faith in the lab tested results.........

I for one will continue to put my faith in the lab tested results.........

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Thanks for posting that GilaMinumBeer. From that article you linked:

Pumping air through a stone is not efficient.
Splashing/shaking is good up to ~8ppm.
Pure oxygen is easiest and most effective with most control. This is good up to as much as 26 ppm @ only 60 seconds.

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They did use a stone with the pure O2 but didn't mention whether they compared pure O2 with stone to O2 without stone.

Page 50.

Pure Oxygen w/ stone 0-26ppm 60 sec

good powerpoint

since i do not have a pure O2 set up here's what I do to get oxygen in.

I dump the boil pot into primary. splashing as much as possible.
then i put a tennis ball under the primary and rock and shake like hell.
i usually do this for 10 mins in 5 min incremenents. then i move it from my upstairs kitchen to my basement and i make sure that shake it as i do this move.

that ppt was interesting because it seemed to say that there was a max you would hit shaking no matter how much you shake.

That's AIR through the stone vs. pure O2 through the stone. I'm curious about pure O2 through the stone vs. pure O2 just bubbled from PVC tubing.

that ppt was interesting because it seemed to say that there was a max you would hit shaking no matter how much you shake.

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That's what I meant by "you can't over aerate your wort" but FlyAngler said that technically that's not the case...but in the real world it pretty much is the case. Maybe you can...but you won't.

Isn't there an old saying that you can have two of fast, good, and cheap? If you want it fast and good, it wont be cheap. If you want it fast and cheap, it probably wont do a good job, so on and so forth.

You can use pure O2 pumped into the wort. This takes very little time and gets the most saturation. However, it is the most expensive method and it can be quite pricey.

Any method of whisking, sloshing, bucket to bucket, whathaveyou is obviously much cheaper, and it can be pretty quick, but it does not get anywhere near the level of saturation that pure O2 gets.

As for me, I do a sort of bucket to bucket thing. After my wort is cool, I put a sanitized fine mesh strainer on top of my bottling bucket and use a sanitized pitcher to scoop wort out and pour it through the strainer from up high. After a couple of these, I just pick up the whole kettle and pour the remainder through the strainer. Then, I place the bottling bucket up on a table, clean out the strainer, place it on top of my primary fermenter and open up the tap. I let it drain from about 4 feet up into the fermenter through the strainer. I am sure that I am maximizing my aeration as far as aerating with air goes. I have not had a fermentation take longer than 4 hours since using this method and I never get stuck fermentations.

SpanishCastleAle said:

That's AIR through the stone vs. pure O2 through the stone. I'm curious about pure O2 through the stone vs. pure O2 just bubbled from PVC tubing.

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Sorry. Missed that. And why the heck did the copy paste go all big.

Off to fix the digital inflection.

I do think that the Siphon spray is a reasonable approximation to what you seek.

So, maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way but...bear with me.

When people carbonate with CO2 instead of priming with sugar, they're essentially introducing a gas (CO2) and causing it to dissolve into the beer by pressurizing it to a certain level and then shaking it all up, right?

So when we aerate, we're attempting to dissolve a gas (oxygen in this case) into the wort (not beer) but we do it by bubbling oxygen through a stone or a venturi.

It seems to me the desired result is the same just using a different gas, so how come nobody aerates in a way similar to the way they carbonate?

How well do those Siphon Spray Aerator tips work? I think I might try going that route instead of the bucket to bucket route.

O2 will definitely give you the most dissolved oxygen.....I have great results with an aquarium pump / stone though. I used to use a whisk, but now I aerate with the pump for 30 minutes while I clean up my brew equipment, and get faster fermentation starts.

It's also a lot less work than shaking /stirring which is nice at the end of a long brew day.

Nothing wrong with any of the methods. Do what you like

njnear76,

Check this out: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-aeration-gadget-68218/

PhlyanPan said:

So, maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way but...bear with me.

When people carbonate with CO2 instead of priming with sugar, they're essentially introducing a gas (CO2) and causing it to dissolve into the beer by pressurizing it to a certain level and then shaking it all up, right?

So when we aerate, we're attempting to dissolve a gas (oxygen in this case) into the wort (not beer) but we do it by bubbling oxygen through a stone or a venturi.

It seems to me the desired result is the same just using a different gas, so how come nobody aerates in a way similar to the way they carbonate?

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Because not too many of us HB'ers have fermenters that would withstand 30psi? And inline is easier.

njnear76 said:

How well do those Siphon Spray Aerator tips work? I think I might try going that route instead of the bucket to bucket route.

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In my experience they suck. They might work ok if you're siphoning to a carboy, but if you use a bucket as a primary like I do, it's hard to get the hose low enough to not splash wort out, but still high enough to aerate well. And if you have the hose leaning up the side of the bucket it doesn't really work very well.....you basically have to construct an elaborate rig......

I tried using mine a couple times but gave up when the hose kept slipping out of place, etc....not worth the hassle.

I use a 2 micron stone with O2... But I use Danstar dry yeast most of the time. And their instructions say aeration is not needed I do aerate but maybe I am just wasting O2 .

Something that confuses me also is, why do we aerate the wort when using starters? If we pitch the proper amount of yeast cells they should go right to work and not reproduce ...

GilaMinumBeer said:

Because not too many of us HB'ers have fermenters that would withstand 30psi? And inline is easier.

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Couldn't you just aerate it in the keg like you would carbonate and then rack it to your fermenter once it's aerated? Easier is a valid point though.

springer said:

Something that confuses me also is, why do we aerate the wort when using starters? If we pitch the proper amount of yeast cells they should go right to work and not reproduce ...

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From the wyeast link provided earlier, even well pitched yeast will still undergo one or two doublings, depending on the dO of the wort.

PhlyanPan said:

Couldn't you just aerate it in the keg like you would carbonate and then rack it to your fermenter once it's aerated? Easier is a valid point though.

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Any oxygen beyond the saturation point (usually about 8.5-11 ppm in water, wort is somewhat lower, depending on its SG) will outgas within a few hours if undisturbed. If you rack or otherwise disturb it, most of what you put in will come out of solution pretty much right away. In other words, you would be throwing money out of the window.

ArcaneXor said:

Any oxygen beyond the saturation point (usually about 8.5-11 ppm in water, wort is somewhat lower, depending on its SG) will outgas within a few hours if undisturbed. If you rack or otherwise disturb it, most of what you put in will come out of solution pretty much right away. In other words, you would be throwing money out of the window.

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Gotcha. Didn't know that. Well that makes it a pretty stupid idea then. Thanks!

I always put the end of my auto-siphon tubing into two re-usable mesh hop bags and siphon through these bags into the carboy. This serves the two purposes of 1) coarse filtration of the wort, and 2) oxygenating the wort - I always have several inches of froth on top of the wort once its in the carboy. I always get really fast take-offs using this method.