Surprising Aeration Results

Putting pure O2 through a stainless diffusor stone does the same thing without having to sanitize a pump. However, many a crafty brewer will put that stone inline with their tubing leading to the fermenter to maximize the contact.

From my Aquarium days, I can tell you all this: Airstones -Big ones - will do the best at aerating of any type of airpump/stone configuration.

But we all knew that surface agitation was the fastest way to aerate water.

Here's what has worked very well for me:

If you partial boil, use chilled bottled water (I use PUR filtered water that I chill in the fridge over-night).

1. Oxygenate one gallon by shaking it vigorously and opening and closing the cap a few times while aerating (pour a little water into the kettle to increase headspace in the gallon jug).
2. Pour this gallon into into your brew kettle while it is an ice bath (or add sanitized frozen water bottles into your BK or use your IC if you have one)
3. Shake a second gallon of chilled water up, and pour that one into your fermenter while creating as much turbulence/splashing that you can.
4. Once your wort has cooled to around 100°F, pour the wort from your brew kettle into your fermenter through a strainer or funnel (if you don't have one of these devices, pour your wort from the BK from as high as you can into to the fermenter at a steady rate and make sure to create as much splashing and turbulence as possible without spilling it).
5. Top off with last chilled gallon to reach your desired level. Remember to pour from a good height, and splash the hell out of it!

As I explained earlier when I shake my gallon jugs of PUR filtered water, I pour a little out first to make more room for aeration, and I open and close the cap a few times during shaking. IMHO this does help.

Practicing this gets me to pitching temps right after the wort is added to the primary (which normally is very close to room temperature about 75°F [+/- 1-2°]) which is usually about the temp of my yeast, I try not to refrigerate my starters.

After starting this "method" I have had a lag time of as little as 3 hours and no longer than 6 hours. My fermentations have been vigorous and finished product has been delicious.

I'm definitely interested in getting more oxygen into my cooled wort. After looking at the prices of some oxygen tanks I really began to wrack my brain...hmmm, I own a plastic watering can that has an oxygenator in it. It really does produce a huge amount of tiny tiny bubbles, and a university study online did conclude that for some plants the oxygenated water produced by the device did help plants grow.

Here's the same device, available in standalone form, sold to fishermen:
THE OXYGENATOR | A patented process to create 100% pure oxygen from the water itself.

Assuming it could be sufficiently cleaned & sterilized, it seems like it could work. I'd love to see what a O2 meter would have to say about the result.

has anyone ever tried adapting one of those aeration adapters you put on the end of a faucet? or would they clog up too easily?

okay, so shaking works great.
problem is my back is not what it used to be. i had just bought an aquarium pump and stone to relieve my back from shaking duty. i also figured the pumps were better.
back when i used to exercise a bunch, i had a really bad high ankle sprain. as i healed, the doc suggested making a "balance disc" to help regain strength in the ankle. "balance disc" = 3/4" plywood cut in an 8" circle. cut a tennis ball in half. sink a few screws at the center of the plywood circle. pill the tennis ball with epoxy, center it under the plywood and let it cure overnight. tennis ball side down, i spent a few minutes a day trying to balance on it. it worked like a champ on my ankle.
so i dug it out of the garage and set an empty carboy on it to try it (tennis ball side up). eureka!!
now i just wonder if half a basball would work for the rest of you. little league basballs are almost all hard rubber cork (not wound cord like adult baseballs). just thinking out loud.

Bobby_M said:

I don't know if you've heard one of the more recent episodes where the original author of the experiment called in and explained that his DO meter was defective and giving reading of up to 2.5 ppm in a sample that should have been close to zero. He mentioned he'd repeat the experiment with a new meter and more aeration techniques. I only hope he uses real wort this time.

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Not having heard the podcast yet, but I am concerned with how they calibrated the dO probe. The ones I use in my fermentors at work have to have the span set. First, make sure there is no O2 in the sample (sparge with nitrogen, or use freshly autoclaved media) and set this as 0%. Then, fully oxygenate using air (which is usually what we use for aerating during growth) and set that as 100%.

So, the 100% is going to be the max you aerated during set up. If I calibrate using air, then blow O2 in, I'd get up to something like 200% dO tension.

The difference between water and wort wouldn't be as important as making sure the correct 100% point is calibrated. Dissolved oxygen tension is a relative scale not an absolute scale like ppm or molarity.

Plus, if the probe was off, then the experiment is useless. Period.

BrewPuppy said:

okay, so shaking works great.
problem is my back is not what it used to be.

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It's already been said a couple of times, but I'll just reiterate. A method that works really well, and doesn't require any back-breaking shaking is this:

Wrap one, or ideally two, sanitized hop bags to the end of your auto-siphon and siphon through these hop bags into your carboy. It turns the beer into a fine spray as it goes into the carboy and aerates the crap out of it - Three plus inches of foam on top of the wort every time. This is all I've done for 2 years after 1 year of the shaking method. With this siphoning method, I've never had a slow start, I've never had contamination, and my back feels great.

BioBeing said:

Not having heard the podcast yet, but I am concerned with how they calibrated the dO probe. The ones I use in my fermentors at work have to have the span set. First, make sure there is no O2 in the sample (sparge with nitrogen, or use freshly autoclaved media) and set this as 0%. Then, fully oxygenate using air (which is usually what we use for aerating during growth) and set that as 100%.

So, the 100% is going to be the max you aerated during set up. If I calibrate using air, then blow O2 in, I'd get up to something like 200% dO tension.

The difference between water and wort wouldn't be as important as making sure the correct 100% point is calibrated. Dissolved oxygen tension is a relative scale not an absolute scale like ppm or molarity.

Plus, if the probe was off, then the experiment is useless. Period.

Click to expand...

I certainly don't want to degrade the guy who took the initiative because I also fancy myself a half assed garage scientist. The truth is, it's easy to think you can look up a few formulas on Google and buy a used instrument off Ebay and start publishing in brewing magazines. For now, I'm going to take the data from Wyeast as authority because it is in their best interest to make sure conditions for their yeast are favorable because it takes some liability off of them. Unless someone finds out that they have a back door deal with the company that makes O2 regulators, I'll trust them.

Regarding the difference between water/wort being insignificant. It may very well be true but to suggest that water was used to save costs and then not provide clear argument for why water is a valid substitute for wort is made of fail.

moti_mo said:

It's already been said a couple of times, but I'll just reiterate. A method that works really well, and doesn't require any back-breaking shaking is this:

Wrap one, or ideally two, sanitized hop bags to the end of your auto-siphon and siphon through these hop bags into your carboy. It turns the beer into a fine spray as it goes into the carboy and aerates the crap out of it - Three plus inches of foam on top of the wort every time. This is all I've done for 2 years after 1 year of the shaking method. With this siphoning method, I've never had a slow start, I've never had contamination, and my back feels great.

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I'm glad this works for you but the amount of foam sitting on top of the wort in the fermenter is not a good indicator of dissolved oxygen. I have a great head on top of my keg poured beers and there's no oxygen in the beer at all.

Also, fast starts usually mean that you either pitched a lot of yeast or have not gotten much oxygen dissolved. Worts devoid of oxygen make the yeast start fermenting faster because they skip the aerobic reproduction phase.

As you've found though, there are a LOT of brewing conditions that can still produce a favorable result even if they are not 100% ideal. If you're happy, you're happy.

Bobby_M said:

I certainly don't want to degrade the guy who took the initiative because I also fancy myself a half assed garage scientist.

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Me neither. I was just peer-reviewing it as I would any other manuscript!

Bobby_M said:

the amount of foam sitting on top of the wort in the fermenter is not a good indicator of dissolved oxygen. I have a great head on top of my keg poured beers and there's no oxygen in the beer at all.

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You have a great head on top of your keg poured beers because you have a large amount of dissolved CO2 in the beer that escapes as a gas, thereby foaming the beer. Similar reason, different gas.