Anyone use the disposable oxygen tanks for aerating?

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Kayos

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I can't find where to purchase the disposable O2 tanks. I don't have any welding shops nearby and the big HD/Lowes by me don't carry them. I want to go this route for aerating. Can you buy online? Other suggestions?

If I go the non-disposable route, anyone know of good deals out there on tanks?
 
Wow, HD/Lowes doesn't have them? Are you sure? I don't believe it is legal to ship them filled, so ordering on line won't get you disposable.
 
On several occasions I've had a sales person at HD/Lowes tell me they don't carry them but they do. Search by the welding section and look at the shelve on the floor - rad cannister.
 
I've heard a lot of times to check in the plumbing area of HD/Lowes. So i was at Lowes last night and i thought I'd check out the disposable tanks. I looked all around the plumbing area and all i could find was propane and MAPP gas. A while back i bought a little portable propane burner in the tool area, so i went over there just to check it out, and thats where I was able to find O2 tanks. So if you only checked in plumbing, check in tools and so on. Just thought i'd mention this incase you were under the same impression as I was prior to last night.

As far as buying them online it seems like you can. I found this on amazon, although it costs more than i saw it last night at Lowes, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LDEYI0/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Lowes was like $7-$8
 
Last edited by a moderator:
yeah, i too have gotten the "we don't carry that" from home depot. went and looked in the tools section, where they have soldering torches and such and they were right there.
 
I use O2. The Lowes near me has them in the welding and brazing section (aisle 71 or something), near the tools. They cost about $8.
 
NICE! I will use my eyes next time. I will let you know......

What O2 system did you all go with? Out of a HBS or ???
 
Originally posted by Kayos
What O2 system did you all go with? Out of a HBS or ???

I use the Oxynator Kit and a disposable O2 tank from Home Depot
o2.jpg
 
I'd be willing to bet the people you taled to just don't know where to look. They carry oxygen at just about ANY hardware store
 
I feel like this happens quite a bit (the lack of knowledge employees -- not the smashing over the head ;) ).

When these stores opened, they had guys who knew what they were talking about. Now it is just who will work for the cheapest pay.
 
I have the stone and everything, but dont want to pay the $50-60 for a oxiginator. All I need is the cap/valve for the tank. Is there anywhere I can get just that, or does HD have something that will work?
 
I've seen just the valve for under $20 at williams (http://www.williamsbrewing.com Item Q11). I was communicating with bernzomatic yesterday and they refused to sell me one as a replacement part for one of the MAPP/OXY torch kits they sell, for liability reasons...go figure.
 
Kayos said:
I feel like this happens quite a bit (the lack of knowledge employees -- not the smashing over the head ;) ).

When these stores opened, they had guys who knew what they were talking about. Now it is just who will work for the cheapest pay.


You're so right!! I also remember a time when you'd be wandering around at HD, and someone would come up to you and make sure you were finding what you were looking for. Now, I ask for help, and they tell me "oh, I don't work in that aisle, let me get someone to help you" which takes a five minute effort on the walkie-talkies and I'm left waiting for a guy for twenty minutes who ultimately doesn't know wtf he's taking about. Remind me why I go there!?
 
biggenius29 said:
I have the stone and everything, but dont want to pay the $50-60 for a oxiginator. All I need is the cap/valve for the tank. Is there anywhere I can get just that, or does HD have something that will work?

Is this what you mean?
 
I have a regulator that was previously used on a propane tank but the tip to the torch went bad. So instead of throwing the whole thing away I was thinking about putting a barb fitting on it and adding a diffusion stone to it. I assume these regulators are the same, is there any reason I shouldn't be doing this? It would probably save me $20.
 
I'm not certain if a propane and oxygen regulator are the same. You could try but I don't think they are.

Edit: Looks like Bobby beat me to it and with a better answer :)
 
Not to get too off-topic, but home depot also told me they don't carry propane burners or turkey fryers... A quick walk down to the grill section and they had about 10 different models to choose from... Like someone said above, mass-market stores don't really cater to the DIY-er who might need a point in the right direction when entering a building the size of some towns...

For the price of the regulator and the diffusion stone, you might as well get the 40 dollar kit with everything. The stainless steel wand is very helpful in getting the stone to the bottom of your fermenter instead of having the plastic tubing float around...
 
Does anyone use a HEPA filter with the O2 tanks since they aren't medical grade? If not have you had any issues with just going straight from the tank to the stone
 
As far as a HEPA, I dont think so.. They do have sanitary in-line filters you can use to remove any particulate matter / bugs that could be in the gas stream.

-Jason
 
Quite a few here do..

You're talking about the O2 tanks you can buy at like Home depot, or Orchard Supply for welding, right?

They even sell kits with the needed regulator, and bottling wand.

http://www.williamsbrewing.com/WILLIAM_S_OXYGEN_AERATION_SYST-P699C106.aspx

-Jason

Yeah that is what I am talking about and I have an aeration system but I have been using a HEPA filter inline since the O2 isn't medical grade and could easily have contaminants in the bottle. However I think my filter is making it hard for the O2 pressure to be great enough to push anything out of the stone... Should I just scratch the filter out of the equation?
 
Most guys use atmospheric air. Do you think that is Medical Grade? I have no problems with the Red Cylinders. No filter. Just an in-line stone.
 
Ok just checking. I wasn't saying it was not right to not use a filter I was just making sure people have had good results without one...
 
I have the inline filter but for some reason I never used it. So 2+ years of just using the red bottles from HD and no issues.
 
I don't dispense beer with food grade CO2 either.
Gas is gas.
If the tank has rust inside, it won't infect the beer, but could taste funny.

I don't filter my disposible O2 gas, and never had an issue.
 
I recently read somewhere that even when using a stone, most of the O2 doesn't get dissolved in the beer (sure, you could run it long enough if you can keep the foam down). The suggestion was to run the O2 enough to fill the headspace of the carboy (which ime will be full of foam by then) and then shake the crap out of the carboy.

I have the Williams kit and have run it with and without the filter and didn't notice a difference (other than it flowing better without it). I mostly just use it for starters and lagers, usually not for typical ales.
 
I recently read somewhere that even when using a stone, most of the O2 doesn't get dissolved in the beer (sure, you could run it long enough if you can keep the foam down). .

Good suggestion.

What I was told was to just let the O2 trickle into the fermenter so it can be absorbed, rather than being blown out into the headspace where it would be lost.
 
Yes, you just trickle the O2 in. I basically start my flow at the top fo the wort so I can see its actually bubbling, then I put it down ot the bottom and move it slowly around (I too have the williams 22" stainless wand airstone setup).

Doing this, I do not see the O2 make it to the surface. i don't actually get foam on top of the wort (in an appreciable amount). And from my experience with dissolving gas into liquid...the above tells me O2 is definitely going into the wort.
 
I've been using the disposable cylinders with the valve shown in this thread but have been very dissapointed with how many batches/cylinder I've been getting. Seems like I get about 5 or 6 minutes of O2 from a cylinder. I guess at 8 bucks a tank it's only a couple bucks extra per batch but it seems like I should get more from a tank that size. Anyone know what the pressure is on these when they are new? Are you guys getting better results?
 
can you buy the regulator or valve to dispense the o2 from the bottle at HD I have tubing and a airstone just need a way to get the o2 into it.
 
I just recently went back to the red O2 tank + SS stone method after years of using an aquarium pump/HEPA filter. This time though, I picked up a flowmeter to measure out the O2 rate.

The Yeast book noted that around 9-12 ppm O2 was optimal and was something you just couldn't get using atmospheric air (aquarium pump, shaking, etc).

I don't have the book in front of me now but I'm guessing it was White Labs that did an experiment where they measured O2 content in 5 gallons of wort after a set amount of oxygenation: 1 min, 2 min, etc. at 1 L/min. I think the 1 L/min for 1 minutes (basically 1 liter of O2) yielded 12 ppm O2.

The authors recommended a trial-and-error approach to dial the oxygenation rate in, assuming that people understandably didn't have a method to measure O2. Personally, I don't have the time or patience to experiment with getting oxygenation right.

For my 10 gallon batches, I've been adding 2 liters of O2, mainly at 0.5 L/min for 4 minutes because the 1L rate is pretty intense and causes a lot of foaming. Even at 0.5 L/min, the flowrate seems high. It foams and you can see the surface disturbance. I believe though that the O2 is trapped in the bubbles and that as the yeast goes through lag phase, it scours up the O2 in the headspace.

So far, the results have been really, really good. I'm getting far more consistent attenuation than I did with air.

Anyway, this went a little off track from the disposable O2 tank thread. Sorry.

To answer Sarrsipius, I've had this O2 bottle for a while. I think I've gotten at least a dozen batches out of it.
 
Mike,

That's awesome info, thanks. Any chance you could take a short video of your .5L/m flow into wort and post it? That could really help out all of us left just guessing how much O2 we're getting in our wort.
 
. This time though, I picked up a flowmeter to measure out the O2 rate.

Yeah, I want to get a flow meter. I have an in line stone that's right after the boil kettle, in stead of right after the plate chiller like alot of folks do, like sabco chill-wizard. (I chill in the kettle, so). The stone is inside a tri-clamp tee and on the outside is a ball lock corny post (this was a custom weld). Anyhoo, it's nice to have whatever tubing connected to the tank be removable from the stone rather than permanently attached. That way you can store the stone in Vodka or something if you want or clean it without discoloring your tubing or having to sanitize that.

Anyhoo, back to the point. In using the little red tanks, a flow meter would be great cause I'm just guessing at this point. And, I've found that as the tank becomes emptier, it flows way less than when new, so you just never know enough to know without a flow meter. I figure at some point, I'll graduate to a medical oxygen tank with a regulator that has a flow meter in it - rather than buying a separate flow meter from Dwyer or something because those are equally expensive and I have to go fill one tank (CO2) every so often anyways as it is.
 
I just bought a 2l refillable tank and pressure regulator. Have to go to fill it up next week.
I'm thinking of buying a oxygen meter to measure the dissolved gasses.
 
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