Shaking fermentor after pitching yeast?

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petrolSpice

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After pitching the yeast should the fermentor be shaken up to help distribute the yeast into the wort?

Can/should the fermantor be shaken during fermentation to help the process?

Thanks.
 
Once yeast is added you shouldn't shake the fermenter. This can cause oxidation and make the beer taste like cardboard.

You can shake all you want prior to adding the yeast. In fact, you should do to add oxygen to your wort.
 
Rockn_M said:
Once yeast is added you shouldn't shake the fermenter. This can cause oxidation and make the beer taste like cardboard.

You can shake all you want prior to adding the yeast. In fact, you should do to add oxygen to your wort.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I did shake the heck out of it before pitching :mug:
 
If it's sealed up with an airlock or blow off tube then I don't think it would be harmful, but I don't think it will be helpful either. The yeast will find the sugar without any assistance.
 
I shake the crap out of the wort before the pitch (about a minute). Then open up the lid, pitch the yeast, re-seal the lid, and shake the crap out of the bucket again for about a minute. The yeast should be fully distributed and about as oxygenated as it will be at the given temp.

After that, I never shake or oxygenate.
 
Shaking directly after you've pitched the yeast is fine. I aerate before I pitch and immediately afterward. In most cases you do not want to aerate once fermentation has started. Before then....your fine.
 
Rockn_M said:
Once yeast is added you shouldn't shake the fermenter. This can cause oxidation and make the beer taste like cardboard.

You can shake all you want prior to adding the yeast. In fact, you should do to add oxygen to your wort.
Click to expand...

Not totally accurate. Shaking the fermenter immediately after pitching yeast is fine. It increases oxygen and evenly distributes the yeast which is good. Once fermentation has started within a few hours shaking the fermenter is not good.
 
Shake before pitching, just after to distribute, and then...

as long as you have active fermentation going on, shaking it a bit is not going to harm anything...your carboy is full of CO2 (hence you'll not be oxygenating anything).
 
And to clarify what is maybe a subtle point, the key is when fermentation starts, not a specific time period. That is, if your fermentation doesn't take off w/in 24 hours, one possible solution is to give your carboy a good shaking. That's worked for me a couple times in the early days.
 
You want to be careful about this. It's OK to shake/aerate/oxygenate for a short time period after pitching yeast. How long that period lasts varies with each batch (depending on pitch rate, temperatures, etc).

Once the yeast progresses beyond the initial (and aerobic) lag/reproduction period and begins anaerobic respiration, any introduction of additional oxygen into the process is a negative. The best thing to do is leave it the heck alone and maintain an optimal temperature.
 
I'm also a beginner and I'm curious too.

I just finished a batch today and after moving the fermenter to my refrigerator, all of the yeast had sank to the bottom and mixed in with the trub. (I had a lot of trub because it's a 1 gal batch and I can't afford to waste that much of it.)

After some research, I decided to swirl it around and get it back into suspension. This seems to have worked because the trub sank to the bottom and it looks like the yeast was still floating around. I had a blowoff assembly hooked up the whole time so there's no way any extra oxygen got in.

So it seems that the general concern is not adding any oxygen after pitching the yeast. But, as long as the fermenter is sealed, it should be ok right? It did start bubbling after I swirled it but it could have been a coincidence.
 
all_about_stouts said:
I'm also a beginner and I'm curious too.

I just finished a batch today and after moving the fermenter to my refrigerator, all of the yeast had sank to the bottom and mixed in with the trub. (I had a lot of trub because it's a 1 gal batch and I can't afford to waste that much of it.)

After some research, I decided to swirl it around and get it back into suspension. This seems to have worked because the trub sank to the bottom and it looks like the yeast was still floating around. I had a blowoff assembly hooked up the whole time so there's no way any extra oxygen got in.

So it seems that the general concern is not adding any oxygen after pitching the yeast. But, as long as the fermenter is sealed, it should be ok right? It did start bubbling after I swirled it but it could have been a coincidence.
Click to expand...

You're fine. There's a big difference between trying to rouse the yeast by a bit of swirling (OK) vs. doing something (whether by accident or on purpose) that introduces O2 into the beer after a certain point in the fermentation.
 
For the most part shaking won't help much. I did a test a few years ago with putting my carboy on the stirplate to try to keep yeast suspended and maximize action (plus it just plain looked cool). It didn't speed up fermentation at all. The yeast will agitate the wort as they rise and fall due to CO2 bubbles stuck to them.
 

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