aeration system recommendations

What does anyone suggest as the most failsafe system for aerating wort prior to pitching yeast. As I'm starting to hone my technique (slowly) and understand the brewing process more intimately, shaking the wort in the jug just isn't cutting it anymore. Thanks.

Well, what I saw the brewers at my local micro brewery do was inject O2 from a tank directly into the transfer tube between their brew kettle and the primary fermenter. They had the oxygen line spliced right into the line. Pretty cool, but not likely to be practical for the homebrewer . Ah well. I have hear about using an aquarium pump with an airstone, immersed directly in your fermenter. I would worry about sanitation of the porus airstone in such a system, but I belive that plenty of people use it succesufully. I also know that they make an attachment to your siphon tube that basically spreads the steam of wort out a bit as you rack, allowing some natural aeration. I imagine you would only want to use this method if you have the means to cool your wort before racking (i.e. somes sort of wort chiller), as I have hear that splashing around your hot wort is a bad idea. All that I do to aerate is pour my cooled wart from the boil kettle (I haven't bought a wort cooler yet, so I just put the kettle in the bathtub w/ cold water) through a funnel into the primary fermenter, as this causes it to splash around abit. Seems to work alright -- D

I've got that handy auto-siphon pump gadget...only used it once but when I did, I pumped the cooled wort to primary and when it was finished I pumped a bunch of times with just air....don't know how much it helped, but I did it.....

I recently bought an oxygenation system. It has a regulator that attaches to a small oxygen bottle that you can buy at most hardware stores, a diffusion stone, and plastic tubing. I've used it several times and the fermentation in my primary has always been much more vigorous than when I used to just shake the fermenter to aerate.

I usually just stir vigorously for about 3 - 5 minutes.

It's a good, cheap (read FREE!) workout.

I just let it splash out of the chiller line to the bottom of the demijohn. It foams up a lot from the splashing, and my fermentations take off great.

The most elaborate I'd go is one of those cone/spreader things that goes on the chiller outflow line and fans out the wort...advanced splashing Anything more complex would be addressing a problem I've never even had