Immersion/stick blender to areate wort

Anyone else use one of these to add oxygen to their pre-pitched wort? Just looking for feedback. A little concerned about possibly adding too much oxygen... Fairly new to this brewing thing, but any feedback is good feedback. Thanx y'all!

What a great idea! I have a nice one that would probably work well. It would be easy to sanitize too. I seriously doubt it could add too much oxygen (is that even possible?). Anyone have any reason it would not work?

Interesting idea.... Subscribed!

It actually wouldn't add enough oxygen. Without having an oxygen supply, you reach a limit (I forget the ppm). You can get there by shaking, pumping air, stick blending, etc. To reach the optimal oxygen ppm, you really need to introduce pure oxygen.

BrewThruYou said:

It actually wouldn't add enough oxygen. Without having an oxygen supply, you reach a limit (I forget the ppm). You can get there by shaking, pumping air, stick blending, etc. To reach the optimal oxygen ppm, you really need to introduce pure oxygen.

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But it also shouldn't be any worse than the shaking, pumping air methods. As long as you can sanitize the mixer and it is strong enough to pull a vortex in a big pot, I don't see a downside.

TheOneBuz said:

But it also shouldn't be any worse than the shaking, pumping air methods. As long as you can sanitize the mixer and it is strong enough to pull a vortex in a big pot, I don't see a downside.

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Totally. Vortex it does! I don't feel good about completely submerging it, just enough to vortex & create a huge foam on top of the wort. I figure w/ a giant blanket of foam (tiny bubbles) on top, I'm getting enough oxygen to dissolve back into the beer, without shaking the **** out of it.

Hi

Gas into liquid is a strange sort of thing. You would *think* that bubbles help. It's a contact time / surface area thing though and bubbles don't stick around for very long.

With pure O2 you can indeed get to much oxygen. Weather "to much" is really going to damage anything is open to debate. Mostly it will keep the yeast doing aerobic things longer. Usually that results in a bit more yeast running around. Same thing as over pitching yeast.

Bob

Thanx Bob! Quite helpful indeed.

TheOneBuz said:

But it also shouldn't be any worse than the shaking, pumping air methods. As long as you can sanitize the mixer and it is strong enough to pull a vortex in a big pot, I don't see a downside.

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the guy from wyeast always says that, aside from injecting oxygen, you wont get any more oxygen into the wort then you would after 45 seconds of rigorous shaking. you can shake for 5 hours, use a blender like this, etc. but you wont get anything more than a good 45 second shake would.

if it makes no positive difference in oxygen level, but its one more point of possible infection, then its a bad idea.

audger said:

the guy from wyeast always says that, aside from injecting oxygen, you wont get any more oxygen into the wort then you would after 45 seconds of rigorous shaking. you can shake for 5 hours, use a blender like this, etc. but you wont get anything more than a good 45 second shake would.

if it makes no positive difference in oxygen level, but its one more point of possible infection, then its a bad idea.

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Duly noted. Thanx dude! I have thought about that, but feeling confident.

The shaft on my stick mixer is stainless steel, removable and can easily be sanitized. It's also very powerful so I'm confident it can pull a strong vortex in five gallons of wort. Next batch is a 10 gallon which will be split into two fermenters. I'll give one the old school shake and the other will get the stick mixer. See if there is any difference.