Rouse Yeast without Oxidizing

[rmleer]

I am looking to rouse my yeast to get a little more activity in my fermentation and was wondering if there is a safe way to do this without worrying about oxidizing the beer?

I was thinking a solution would be to use a soda keg co2 charger without an adapter and giving a couple of spurts into the carboy to essentially purge the oxygen out of it and then use a mix-stir on a drill and give that a couple of quick spurts to get the yeast into suspension.

Has anyone ever tried this before. I would think it would work but I was wondering what others thought.

Thanks!

 

[Teromous]

Yeah you can do this. It depends on what stage your fermentation is at though. If you simply have a short stalled fermentation or a slow starting fermentation, you can rouse the yeast without fear of oxidation because the yeast will scavenge the residual O2. Sometimes the O2 is what the yeast needs early on in the fermentation (early on). Otherwise you can give it a few shots of CO2 while agitating it.

On a side note, I've swirled buckets and carboys a bit to rouse the yeast without any ill-effects (without adding CO2). There is usually enough suspended CO2 that when I swirl it (until the carboy looks milky) it's pushing a significant quantity of CO2 out of the top. You can tell because the airlock is bubbling out and not sucking back. I have not used a drill before. I would definitely give it a few swirls every couple of hours before I reached for the power tools though. Yeast sometimes needs a little help, but brewers sometimes need a little patience.

 

[ArcLight]

I take a big plastic spoon and gently mix up the bottom, so there is no splashing.
The Trub will eventually settle, especially since I do this within the first weak, and I usually let beer sit for several weeks.

 

[TAK]

If you're planning on purging with CO2 anyway, you could use the CO2 itself to rouse the yeast. I know others do this. Instead of purging the top with CO2, get the tube, or whatever you're using, down into the yeast cake and some short blasts from the bottom will rouse it up.

 

[wfd336]

If you're using a Carboy, most of the oxygen in it has already been displaced by the co2 from the fermentation process. A gentle shake of the Carboy, without too much splashing should do the trick. Many, many people do this after the first round of vigorous fermentation when the krausen initially begins to settle.


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