Oxygenation Kit Regulator Help

[jescholler]

I just got my oxygenation kit from AHS:
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_33_352&products_id=2437

I believe the regulator is pretty common. I understand it takes a bit of experimentation with flow rates and times to get the proper amount of oxygen. Since it's hard to gauge the flow rate with the regulator, I was wondering how some of you do it with this regulator. I'll probably start with 60 seconds, but I don't know what level to adjust the regulator to. From what I hear, it's not too far of a turn from completely off to full blast.

 

[Blender]

When I do it I set it so that the O2 just breaks the surface of the wort. I have the Williams stone on the end of the tube so the O2 rises from the bottom. My thought is that anything more is a waste of the O2.

 

[jescholler]

I haven't had a chance to test mine out yet. When you say "just breaks the surface", what do you mean. I can guess that you'll be able to see bubbles at the stone, and for you, you try to make it so that they almost disappear just before the surface?

That's the 2 micron stone right? How long do you run it at that rate?

 

[CrystallineEntity]

I have the Williams kit. I usually let it go 1 minute. Has worked great for me so far.

 

[Revvy]

They are pretty junky regulators, in fact there was a recall on them recently. They pretty much only have one working "flow rate", and that is full blast (opened all the way.) Anything else and nothing comes out.

I use between 2 and 5 minutes depending on the gravity of my beers. Most of the time I just turn it on for 2 minutes.

If yours didn't come with the tube, and was just the hose, I encourage you to make one like I did.

Mine didn't have the tubing either, so I took a broken piece of racking cane, cut a tiny piece of the hose as a bridge connect and rigged up my own.

Otherwise the stone will have a tendency to float to the surface of the wort and not do that good of a job of aerating it.

This is my Barleywine which I did 5 minutes of 02 Since the og was 1.150 (I also gave it another blast of oxygen @ under 10 hours after yeast pitch, which is recommended by Chris Whyte of Whitelabs for high grav beer.)

Needless to say I had a VERY active fermentation. I blew the lid and it rocked and rolled for nearly a week.







Healthy fermentation is the bomb......literally.

 

[Blender]

I haven't had a chance to test mine out yet. When you say "just breaks the surface", what do you mean. I can guess that you'll be able to see bubbles at the stone, and for you, you try to make it so that they almost disappear just before the surface?

That's the 2 micron stone right? How long do you run it at that rate?

You might not see the O2 at the stone but you should see it break the surface of the wort. I can regulate the rate on mine fairly well but it gets different as the O2 bottle drains over time. I run mine about 2 minutes.

 

[the_bird]

You do NOT want "full blast" or anything close to it. There's a sweet spot you can dial in, you want to just be able to see the bubbles coming out, if the bubbles are huge it's just wasting O2. This is one place where a carboy/BB is nice, I put the O2 wand right next on the side of the fermenter so I can see if it's a lot or a little O2 being released.

 

[Revvy]

You do NOT want "full blast" or anything close to it. There's a sweet spot you can dial in, you want to just be able to see the bubbles coming out, if the bubbles are huge it's just wasting O2. This is one place where a carboy/BB is nice, I put the O2 wand right next on the side of the fermenter so I can see if it's a lot or a little O2 being released.

Not on a lot of folks regulators that bought there's a few years back like me. There's a couple threads a year on here of folks saying the same thing, that their regulators are NOT putting out any O2 UNLESS the throttle on the regulator is opened all the way. It's easily testable in water, sticking the stone in and turning it on...on mine, you wont see any activity near the stone until the damn thing is cranked all the way.

My understand, THAT might be the reason for the recall as was posted on a thread in here about a month back...I'm trying to find the thread.

But if you have a regulator like mine, and many of us, the ONLY way it is going to work is to crank it all the way open.

 

[the_bird]

I've had a couple of them, they're cheap POS'es and they break. All of them, though, if I put it on full-blast, I'm draining the bottle in ~30 seconds. Point being - however your regulator works, you want the O2 to come out as slowly as you can get it to come out. All those bubbles that reach the surface - guess what, that O2 didn't get absorbed.

 

[jescholler]

I think I have a good feel for what to expect now. Looks like I need to get an O2 tank and give it a test run in some water.

One more thing...Do you guy use hose clamps on your setups? Mine came with a clamp on the regulator end, but not on the stone end. That would be a lot of clamps if I decide to go with Revvy's racking cane idea.

 

[Revvy]

Jes, no, mine had no clamps, but it did have and inline hepa filter about 4 inches from the regulator. I just use that as a quick disconnect from the regulator for storage.

Prior to me rigging up my tube, the filter was just stuck in the end of the hose.