Aerating Partial Boil?

[cayugalakebrewer]

Good Day, Guys:
This is a newbie process question. If you are going to do a partial boil, rather than aerating the wort portion in the kettle prior to pitching, instead can you independently aerate the cooled top-off water in the fermenter to provide enough oxygenation for the whole batch? If so, seems to me to have a couple of benefits including less open time, less foaming, more oxygen retention due to colder temp, and one less time step in the kettle at critical temp for bacteria production. Am I missing something? Thx.

 

[hotbeer]

If you are pitching dry yeast you don't even need to aerate.

For liquid yeast or reused dry yeast which is now liquid yeast, then aeration is beneficial. In your case, you are doing some. The question is whether it's enough. I wouldn't think so. Plus, if you are cooling the wort with the top off water in addition to just bringing up it up to the needed volume, then I'd think the hotter wort would drive off some of the aeration that is in that smaller amount of top off water.

Knowing how much you have in total quantity might help. For a 6 gallon bucket fermenter or less, just picking it up and shaking the heck out of it for a minute or two is probably reasonable. If you want to be high tech, bubble it with a aquarium pump. Or for super dooper overkill (in many cases) bubble some pure oxygen in it.

..... IMO!