Examine my oxygen process...Can I improve?

I have an aquarium pump with a SS stone and a filter. Here is what I have done in the past but not sure if it is right.

After chilling my wort to 68-70*, I pour from BK into a sanitized bucket with a lid that has a hole in it that my air line runs through so I can set the stone on the bottom of the bucket and close it up while having the stone in the bucket.

I let it aerate for 30 min while I clean up and decant my starter. After 30 min, I pitch into the bucket, stir it up, and then pour from bucket into carboy just to get everything mixed up with some more O2.

I am over doing it? Should I pitch and then aerate? Should I keep up what I am doing?

Sounds more than adequate to me. I can't imagine that the order of aeration/pitching could possibly make any difference.

I suggest you might even make it easier for yourself and skip the bucket. I toss into the carboy, and aerate the using an orange cap that allows me to run a dip tube down for the aeration stone, plus a blowoff tube to catch the foam overflow. But perhaps you (like me) also use the bucket as a trub removal device, in which case this advice isn't helpful.

You can improve by using pure O2.

+1 on skipping the bucket.

Use pure oxygen instead of air. Air can only get so much oxygen into solution, in order to get past that limit pure 02 is needed.

You can go one of 3 routes. From worst to best: Home Depot oxygen canisters, 10lb 02 tank(harbor freight), medical tank and regulator.

When you switch to pure oxygen it's relatively important to know how much 02 you are moving to calculate how much is in solution.

You will be done in less than a few minutes using oxygen and have higher oxygen levels in your wort.

In time I plan to move to pure oxygen, but right now, the budget is just about non-existent and I need some other brewing stuff before I invest in that. For now, I am trying to make the best use from my $30 set up. Thanks for the tips guys.

Don't worry, you can make perfectly awesome beer with just air. It was done that way for hundreds of years and it worked perfectly fine. I've seen the numbers and I'm sticking with air.

formula2fast said:

In time I plan to move to pure oxygen, but right now, the budget is just about non-existent and I need some other brewing stuff before I invest in that. For now, I am trying to make the best use from my $30 set up. Thanks for the tips guys.

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Yes, do it when you can but don't move it too far down your priority list. Fermentation is everything--yeast pitching rates, temperature control, and sufficient O2.

Make a yeast starter on a stir plate! You will get plenty of O2 in that phase instead! Just started mine off, watch it go