Transferring from bucket to kettle

I read Bobby M's guide on all-grain and have a question regarding the below section after collection all the wort from first runnings and sparging.

"Remove any excess water from the kettle and carefully transfer all your wort from the buckets into the kettle. Stir this wort up and draw off a bit to measure your pre-boil gravity and take note of it. You'll also need an accurate measurement of how much volume you collected. Once you have these two numbers you can figure out your mash/lauter efficiency as explained earlier on this page."

How can I transfer from the bucket to the kettle carefully? Last time I just poured it from the bucket to the kettle, should I worry about hot side aeration?

Hot side aeration should not be an issue pre-boil. Boiling will drive off any Oxygen that gets in, and the solution should actually be pretty O2 saturated just from the mashing anyway.
Probably just meant to be careful so you don't spill sticky wort all over the house and get banned from brewing by your significant other, or something like that.

That's new to me, I wasn't aware hotside aeration was only an issue post boil, but I'm glad to hear it. I also splashed quite a bit while vorlauf'ing, but I guess I was worrying about nothing.

From John Palmer - How to Brew.

"[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hot side aeration can occur anytime the wort is hotter than 80°F. Oxidation of wort compounds will not be affected by the subsequent boil, and will cause flavor stability problems later." - He was talking about doughing in.

"[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]After the conversion, the mash is carefully poured or ladled from the mash tun into the lauter tun and lautered. The hot mash and wort is susceptible to oxidation due to hot side aeration (HSA) due to splashing at this stage, which can lead to long term flavor stability problems."

I'm sure it could be a problem if you're going to keep the beer for a very long time, but I've never noticed any off flavors, so RDWHAHB.

-a.

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ajf said:

From John Palmer - How to Brew.

so RDWHAHB.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I've read that before, but never really paid any attention to it. Here's what I don't get. Unless you boil the water you dough in with, and then flush the tun with CO2 before you dough in and mix, then there is TONS of O2 and all the liquid is likely nearly O2 saturated anyway, and about 150° to boot.
Are you sure that isn't supposed to be 180°?

Oh yeah, and +1 on the RDWHAHB. This is just theory at this point. I think many many people have a big drop from the MT to the kettle. There are many pics on this site to prove it.