Aerating Wort - My New Method

Greetings,

I just stumbled across what I think is a pretty easy and efficient way to aerate wort... Just use your immersion chiller! Seriously, when cooling, I tend to swirl the wort occasionally, using the chiller coil as my "paddle"... This breaks up laminar temperatures that are slowing heat transfer.

More to point, I've learned that when you get down to about 80 degrees, if you'll start lifting the coils several inches out of the wort, the wort that comes with it will drop back in nice thin sheets. These thin sheets are the coolest wort in your pot, making them the hungriest for oxygen. Since there is a lot of surface area exposed to fresh air, I'm fairly confident that good oxygenization is occurring. I do this starting at 80 and continuing down to 70. When I'm done, I have a nice frothy head and consider it good.

Note, I'm sure this isn't as good as an oxygen stone but, I'd wager that it is probably more effective than a wire whisk... Even on a drill.

Thoughts? Holes?

I like it! I do this inadvertently I guess. But I still shake the fermenter violently before pitching the yeast, if anything for exercise sake.

Interesting...

About how long are you doing this?

arturo7 said:

Interesting...

About how long are you doing this?

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It takes a few minutes... But it helps quickly get that last ten degrees out of the wort. In other words, it cools the wort faster than just leaving the chiller coil sitting there idle.

Just lift it up and down, like a butter churn. I suppose you could call it wort jerking.

I'm actually in the process of patenting the phrase "Jerk My Wort" for use in the domain name, some T-Shirts, mugs, mouse pads, etc. We should crunch some numbers, toss some ideas off each other. Get in on the ground floor, make this thing happen. JERK MY WORT.

This was great advice that don from naked city lent to me when I first started all grain, chill time from 80 and under was always such a pain, it really makes a difference pumping that sucker!

I do this too.

The only thing I would be concern with is you are exposing the wort to outside air. This air has dust and on that dust is the nasty bugs. I am not saying this would happen but could happen. I think after chilling you would want to keep the cooled wort away from outside air and use a filtered Stone or pure O2. How long have you been using this method?

Brew-boy said:

The only thing I would be concern with is you are exposing the wort to outside air. This air has dust and on that dust is the nasty bugs. I am not saying this would happen but could happen. I think after chilling you would want to keep the cooled wort away from outside air and use a filtered Stone or pure O2. How long have you been using this method?

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As mentioned earlier, I completely agree that an O2 stone is better if you have one. If you don't, I don't see how the risk with this technique is worse than any other (with regard to possible infection).

BigTexun said:

As mentioned earlier, I completely agree that an O2 stone is better if you have one. If you don't, I don't see how the risk with this technique is worse than any other (with regard to possible infection).

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Sloshing around in the carboy is probably a "cleaner" method than doing this in a larger open vessel, but I doubt it matters a ton either way. Still going to be limited to ~8ppm dissolves O2.

That probably works but I haven't found it necessary. I just pour my wort through a strainer in a funnel above the carboy. I get plenty of O2 that way and as a bonus I get cooling as well. I start when the wort is about 100F. By the time I fill the carboy it's only few degrees above ambient.

I do it more to chill the wort then to aerate.

Very interesting. Thanks for the post.