I was pitching my starter into my wort the other day and heard the distinctive plunk of the stir-bar falling into my fermenter. This roused an idea I had a while back to use the stir-plate during fermentation. I did not attempt this due to not really understanding if it would help or hurt. I thought it could be useful with big beers or slow fermentations where rousing the yeast is often employed to help push the fermentation to completion. I imagine it would need to be turned off at some point to let the yeast floc out and clarify. Any thoughts?
Stirring Fermentation
- Thread starter rahmdog
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Indian_villager
Well-Known Member
Isn't there a vendor here who specifically sells a stir plate capable of vortexing a 5 gal carboy just for what you are asking? I don't think your regular stir plate will have the energy to keep this moving at an appreciable rate.
kombat
Well-Known Member
The purpose of the stir plate is to continuously oxygenate the starter wort. This is fine for the starter, because the purpose is to grow yeast cells, not make drinkable beer.
With your beer, however, you do NOT want to continuously introduce oxygen once fermentation has started, because you will simply oxidize your beer.
With your beer, however, you do NOT want to continuously introduce oxygen once fermentation has started, because you will simply oxidize your beer.
Well the oxygenation effects of using a stir-bar and stir-plate only work because the starter is open to air allowing for the mixing in of new air into the starter solution. In the fermentation vessel there would be no such access to additional oxygen after the airlock is in place so I would not be concerned about oxidation. After looking though some of the 'similar threads' I see that a few people have had a similar idea but I did not see a conclusive verdict. One day I will have to split a batch and see what the difference is I guess.
