Hot side aeration

Is hot side aeration only a concern when the water becomes wort? I do not have a pump yet but want to step up to a ten gallon batch. If I boil in a kettle then transfer 5 gallons at a time to a liquor tun will aeration be a concern? Or should I just wait till I get a pump or try an aeration-less siphon?

HSA is another one of the homebrewing boogeymen, like autolysis, that really isn't anything to lose sleep over.

It is something that is more of a concern for professional breweries brewing light (and tasteless) lagers, but is really not something that can happen to us...

I'll save you the bother of searching...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/hot-side-aeration-so-im-idiot-71873/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/who-afraid-hsa-76779/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/hot-side-aeration-71806/

HSA is something that get's discussed by commercial brewers in journals, and some overzealous homebrewer then starts worrying about it, and it get spread into the HOBBY community, with little understanding...and then people brewing thier first beer start threads worrying about it...

So don't sweat your new brewer head about HSA....or anything, you beer is much hardier than you think...

And if you still are worried, then watch this video of a commercial brewhouse...

You think they are concerned about HSA?


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3uyKjLTWJA]YouTube - Transferring from Mash Tun to Boil Kettle[/ame]

Thanks Revvy,
Not a problem then, sounds good. Just been doing a bunch of reading and the books keep mentioning it, so wanted to make sure.

Commercial brewers brewing light lagers?

Sierra Nevada's brew house is lower oxygen than is Anheuser Busch's.

Either way, every informed opinion agrees that oxidation occurs on the hot side. Where people disagree is in whether or not it is negative on balance. Most opinions are to avoid it, Charles Bamforth is very vocally in the minority.

Whether HSA is a concern or not it does make sense to transfer the wort to BK with the method that exposes it to the least chance of HSA, obviously within reason of your capabilities. I pump from MLT to ball valve of BK.

As in all things like this, too me the only way to prove it one way or another is to do a side by side test and then taste your beer over the long term. Otherwise it is just myth on top of more myth.

Photopilot said:

Is hot side aeration only a concern when the water becomes wort? I do not have a pump yet but want to step up to a ten gallon batch. If I boil in a kettle then transfer 5 gallons at a time to a liquor tun will aeration be a concern? Or should I just wait till I get a pump or try an aeration-less siphon?

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Waitasec, what do you mean by liquor tun? Do you mean Hot Liquor Tun? HSA is NOT a concern in pure water as far as I know...and many will argue that it doesn't even matter until post-boil.

shortyjacobs said:

Waitasec, what do you mean by liquor tun? Do you mean Hot Liquor Tun?

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Yep. I am planning on pumping but kind of blew my wad getting this far in the build. I want to wait a bit before pumps and quick connects. So for now it will be heat water in BK then into a Pot to transfer up to HLT then gravity takes over from there.

PS like the winch in the brewery setup. In my house (where I do not live at the moment.) I sheetrocked in green rock under a glue laminated beam with this in mind. Someday I will get to live in my house and do something like you did.

Photopilot said:

Yep. I am planning on pumping but kind of blew my wad getting this far in the build. I want to wait a bit before pumps and quick connects. So for now it will be heat water in BK then into a Pot to transfer up to HLT then gravity takes over from there.

PS like the winch in the brewery setup. In my house (where I do not live at the moment.) I sheetrocked in green rock under a glue laminated beam with this in mind. Someday I will get to live in my house and do something like you did.

Click to expand...

OK, in that case I think that even by stringent standards, you are fine. I've never heard of anyone worrying about degassing water before brewing with it. I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure HSA of water is never a concern.

Thanks for the comments on the winch...it works incredibly well...no lifting at all...only thing I wanna do in the future is put it on a track so I can move the winch with the pot instead of moving the whole setup underneath the winch...but hell, it works and was cheap enough, and I still have a 2 car garage that I can put 2 cars in, (and a kegerator, and a deep freeze, and 3 shelves, and a 15' long workbench, and a tablesaw, and a chop saw, and a shop vac, and a 50 gallon plumbed sink, and other toys...it's starting to resemble a real life tetris game).

I happen to be with Revy on this one. I've never concerned my self with HSA. The only time it is an issue for me is when I'm transferring the runnings to my boiling pot. After the transfer it is immediately started to a boil. I figure boiling for an hour to 90 minutes will take care of the oxygen in the wort. I have a hard time believing that 5-10 minutes of exposure to oxygen will kill my beer.....(especially when I'm using water that oxygen in it.), it hasn't yet. For thousands of years man has made beer without pumps...... If your setup is already designed with pumps, than pump away.

Spend your time worry about what your beer is doing during fermentation and conditioning rather than worry about HSA. Should you try to keep HSA under control when transferring from MLT to BK? Yeah--but I wouldn't spend any money or time other than to put your hose to the bottom of the kettle when transferring. Get the ability to control fermentation temperature and pitch the proper amount of yeast before you start worrying about HSA.