Castle Meadow Brewery
Hop Head
I had a problem with the oxygenation / oxidation conundrum when I first started so I thought I'd post this. Yeast need oxygen to reproduce and grow. As they grow through their life cycle, they eat the sugar and produce what we're after: CO2 & Alcohol. Boiling the wort removes the oxygen so you'll want to get as much in there at the start so your yeast can hit the ground running. This is OXYGENATION. After fermentation is complete we DON"T want to introduce any oxygen into the beer. It screws with the hop oils and can produce skunky and off flavors. If you do its called OXIDATION.
