Oxygenating with pure O2 and shaking

[bctdi]

So my current process is to oxygenate with pure O2 through a stone for tiny bubbles for 60 seconds, then I cap my carboy and shake like crazy. I figure that any pure O2 that bubbled up through the wort will be remixed into the wort during the shake-up.
After discussing this with another brewer, he insisted that I was actually de-gassing my wort by shaking it. I thought about it for a few seconds and now I'm thinking he may possibly be right. So what does the rest of the brewing community think? Am I mixing the O2 in or am I taking it back out?

 

[Yooper]

I don't think you're "taking it back out", as when you use a diffusion stone the oxygen should be available to the wort. But you're definitely not helping- once the wort is saturated and at about 10 ppm, shaking won't encourage more diffusion.

 

[day_trippr]

Definitely mixing.

The O2 that didn't dissolve in the first pass is sitting in the head space, with only the flat 2D area between the O2 and the beer. Otoh, splashing the crap out of the vessel makes for a lot more O2/wort contact.

And you'd have to get to around 40ppm before wort is "saturated" with O2 at room temperature. That isn't going to happen from "tiny bubbles for 60 seconds"...

Cheers!

 

[bctdi]

Definitely mixing.



The O2 that didn't dissolve in the first pass is sitting in the head space, with only the flat 2D area between the O2 and the beer. Otoh, splashing the crap out of the vessel makes for a lot more O2/wort contact.



And you'd have to get to around 40ppm before wort is "saturated" with O2 at room temperature. That isn't going to happen from "tiny bubbles for 60 seconds"...



Cheers!

That was my original thought, that any O2 that bubbled to the top would be in the head space , and shaking it would ensure good wort contact.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Cyclman]

I think it is a little bit like wearing suspenders and a belt at the same time.

If you're doing a HUGE beer, you can add more O2 after 6-8 hrs.

 

[bctdi]

The brewer who suggested that I was degassing my beer pointed out that wine makers use a drill attached mixer in their carboys and mix thoroughly for 20-30 minutes to get the CO2 out of the wine that was created during fermentation. So that's what got me thinking that maybe there was something to what he was saying, but I really don't know the science behind degassing wine to get CO2 out and shaking wort to get O2 in.
The reason I would like to shake the O2 in is because when I oxygenate using the wand I see tiny bubbles on the surface, so it makes me wonder if the O2 is just bubbling out of the wort and into the head space, or am I really oxygenating my wort properly? I know that pro brewers use a whole different process like inline aeration which would not really address this issue from a home brewer standpoint.
As home brewers it has been drilled in to our heads to never splash the wort post fermentation to keep the O2 out, so the whole wine degassing procedure and the home brew process seem to contradict each other on the surface.

 

[AnOldUR]

After running your stone for a minute the head space is almost pure O2. And like day tripper says, your wort is not saturated, so shaking the capped carboy can only put more oxygen into solution.

Actually, purging the head space with O2 and hard shaking done several times can be as effective as using a stone. Just more labor intense.

 

[bctdi]

So anecdotally I just brewed a belgian tripel and used my normal process... 1.5 mins pure o2 through a stone, then vigorous shaking. I had fermentation activity in less than 5 hours, so I don't think that would have occurred in an O2 depleted wort. Thanks for the responses folks. It's always nice to bounce ideas off the homebrewtalk collective big brain!

 

[ndsgr]

The reason I would like to shake the O2 in is because when I oxygenate using the wand I see tiny bubbles on the surface, so it makes me wonder if the O2 is just bubbling out of the wort and into the head space, or am I really oxygenating my wort properly?

It's not. Yes, you are. Measurements of dissolved O2 have shown that the diffusion stone works.

Aside from yeast health, the other reason I even dropped the change on the O2 set up was to stop shaking the carboy. Maybe just my statistically insignificant sample size, but head retention sucked on beers I shook.