Can you over aerate?

Recently brewed a Pale Ale and it was my first attempt air good aeration. But when I tried it it had an off taste. Basically what I did was cool it and pour it into a glass carboy and shook it upside down and all around for about 5 minutes, after which I pitched the yeast. Is there anyway I could have over aerated?

 

Without bottled oxygen, not really. What you've described is pretty standard. Most actually do a bit more time than that.

 

Temperature during the ferment period is the usual cause of off flavors followed by chlorine/chloramine in the water supply or boiling with the lid on the pot. If you explain what the flavor was people can help you ferret out the cause.

 

No matter how much you shake or slosh, you can only dissolve so much oxygen into your beer. An aeration stone with normal air will get you more, and an aeration stone with oxygen will get the most.

 

I boil with lid on pot quite a bit. Not sure I've ever noticed off flavors. If I don't use lid the rolling boil would never happen on my glass top stove.

 

This may not be much of a problem with extract but if you do all grain it surely could leave your beer smelling like cooked vegetables. The cause is a compound called dimethyl sulfide or DMS and the precursor chemicals are driven off by the boil. With the lid on the chemicals condense on the lid and drip back into the wort.

 

You definitely need to remove the lid when boiling with all grain. The whole point of the boil is to drive off DMS.

 

Not to nitpick, but driving off DMS is only one purpose of the boil, not the whole purpose. There's also killing bacteria, hop utilization, and allowing Maillard reactions to consider. Probably a few other things too.

To the OP, no you can't get too much aeration from shaking, or even from an air stone if you're just using air. I'm not 100% sure on the numbers, but I think it's something like a maximum of 5ppm oxygen with shaking, a maximum of 8ppm using an air stone, and 8-10ppm is ideal for yeast propagation. Those upper ranges can only be reached or exceeded using oxygen rather than air.

Can you describe the off-flavor you're getting? It could be as simple as not letting the beer age long enough before drinking, or having too high of a fermentation temperature, or the recipe.

 

Basically it was a odd warm'ish yeast'ish almost cardboard taste right at the end just before the after taste.

Side note I ended up kegging it and carbonating it and the flavor has seem to subsided. I think part of it might be that its a much lighter beer then what I have been brewing.

 

Thanks Everyone for your help!