Just thinking, stir plate on beer

Looking at beers like the Union Jack clone that asks for a highly flocculant yeast to ferment a 1.070 beer down towards 1.012 seems like a bit of a trick. So what if you were to use a stir plate on that beer to keep the yeast in suspension. Certainly it would help the yeast to get every point of attenuation, but what would be the pro/cons of doing so?

Would having the trub suspended along with the yeast cause problems? Would it result in oxygen getting added after lag phase or would the CO2 blanket be sufficient to protect it? Are there off flavors that might result?

Would you have to run a stir plate until FG was reached or could you run it for a few days only to get a noticeable improvement?

Anyway, just bored at work and thinking of such things.

 

Darn good question!

I am posting to "bump" this topic and to subscribe for updates/answers.

Why hasn't anybody started using fermentors with stirring capabilities? For those who harvest/skim kräusen, I would see this not being an option, but I would think using a stirrer would speed fermentations (and help prevent stuck fermentations) by keeping the yeast suspended and driving off additional CO2...

I do not think that oxygenation would be an issue with a gentle stir, as oxygenation of the cool wort prior to fermentation is desired/not an oxydation issue, and once fermentation started, the driven off co2 would form a protective layer over the gently swirling wort....

Why don't commercial breweries or homebrewers do this? Is there just not enough marginal benefit to the process, versus the cost of sanitizing the nooks and crannies of another apparatus in a fermenter (commercial applications would have to have large, rotating stir arms, I would imagine, which could add unneeded complexity to a process that already generally takes care of itself otherwise.)? ...and homebrewers likely just try and adopt and miniaturize what the big boys do, without trying to be innovative, so nobody's tried to add a feature that doesn't happen commercially....?

...Like the OP said, this woud probably have best applicability to high OG beers (especially those with flocculent yeasts). Why haven't we heard of anyone doing this before?

Good question. I salute your thinking.

...Thinking to myself, if I was doing your beer, I would probably swirl my fermentor maybe every other day, out of paranoia, for the same end effect. A stir bar in the carboy (or something similar) would save me the risk of a trip to the hospital for shredded arm tendons and nerve damage, though.

 

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-not-use-stir-plate-fermentation-205150/

 

IMO zero benefit

 

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/why-dont-we-agitate-during-fermentation-144315/#post1644940

My fermentations work fine without needing to do it. I pitch enough healthy yeast, and aerate my wort with an o2 stone, so I have never had any issues with fermentation. The yeasties seem to swim around eating sugar and peeing alcohol and farting co2 good enough on their own without needing an amusement park ride to do so.

 

I asked the same exact question a week or two ago. Got some good answers why NOT to do this:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/stir-plate-under-full-batch-204581/

 

Some commercial breweries agitate fermenting wort. You need to prevent oxygen ingress though, which you can't do in a carboy.

 

Good thoughts everyone...didn't see that other thread when it came out so sorry for missing it. The consensus seems to be that most benefit would be during the lag phase to help maximize contact with oxygen. With the only other benefit being as a quick agitation late in fermentation to help get those last few points. However, that wouldn't work because the bar would be completely stuck in the trub unless you have an industrial stir bar, and that would be so powerful it would likely do way more stirring than a gentle agitation risking the oxygen issue.