Using oxygen to cool wort

[neckbone]

I was chatting with a buddy last night about airating with an oxygen system and he said something that peaked my interest. I assume that the oxygen bottles you buy at the hardware store for this system is compressed O. When compressed gas is released, it's very cold.

My question, could you use a oxygen system to say reduce your wort temp from 120-130 down to pitching temp?

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

I'm imagining a kitchen full of froth here. I'm sure if it's viable then there will be someone along in a moment that has tried this.

 

[Revvy]

Well considering our airstones are usually on vinyl tubes and/or racking canes I wouldn't put that in boiling wort...

Then it would also take a heck of a lot of o2 at 8 dollars a bottle to chill down 5 gallons within a reasonable amount of time, proabably more than one bottle...besides the ot doesn't feel cold when it comes out of my system, so I'm thinking the O2 is probably NOT stored at cold compression temps in those red bottles..

Plus, my handy dandy wort chiller works fine and pretty quick..

 

[neckbone]

The idea wasn't to use it to drop from boiling, but to find the change in temp that using it for the 2 minutes needed would provide. Then, you back that out and you have a new temp that you could use your immersion chiller to bring your wort to, maybe say 120 deg. Of course, if it's not really compressed gas, then I guess it makes no difference.

 

[Cpt_Kirks]

Everything I have read and heard states you do NOT want oxygen in contact with hot wort. The wort should be cooled, THEN aerated.

 

[Brewers Hardware]

Everything I have read and heard states you do NOT want oxygen in contact with hot wort. The wort should be cooled, THEN aerated.

This is issue number one.

Number two, O2 is stored as a compressed gas, but not as a gas over liquid like CO2 or Propane. While there is a slight cooling effect from the rapid expansion, the real cooling effect (refrigeration) comes from the phase change between a liquid to a gas. Propane cylinders and CO2 cylinders can and will freeze over because the liquid inside is changing phase to a gas, absorbing a tremendous amount of energy at the same time.

Refrigeration works the same way, but has a compressor and condenser to continually recompress the refrigerant from a gaseous state to a liquid state, releasing energy through the condenser coil and then allowing the refrigerant to expand again from a liquid to a gas through the metering device and into the evaporator coil, absorbing energy at the same time.

Bottom line is the O2 is not expanding fast enough to make a measurable difference in cooling your wort.

 

[Brewer_Steve]

Why would you use oxygen for this?
If you are going to start experimenting with using compressed gas to cool, I'd strongly suggest using air instead of oxygen, since oxygen is actually combustible. Air is safer than oxygen.
Another advantage is that you'll be hard pressed to find oxygen over 2400 psi. You can get air up to 4000 psi quite easily and the greater pressure drop will mean more cooling. Air is also cheaper than oxygen.

I have no idea if using compressed gas to cool wort is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure that air is a much, much better idea than oxygen.

 

[nathan]

as mentioned, you want little turbulence or oxygen exposure to wort above 80F.

 

[Cpt_Kirks]

One more thing: it appears oxygen is not the best thing to use to "oxygenate" your wort. Some experimentation was done, and it appeared that regular air produced better tasting beer than pure oxygen.

If I can find the link related to that, I will post it.

 

[Bobby_M]

Never heard of that and it goes against a study that White Labs did. I'm highly skeptical.

 

[Cpt_Kirks]

Never heard of that and it goes against a study that White Labs did. I'm highly skeptical.

Found it:

"How To Brew", page 71, quoting from the March/April 2004 Zymurgy.

 

[david_42]

The specific heat capacity of oxygen is about 1/4 that of water, so you would need over 100 lbs of O2 to cool 5 gallons of wort from 120F-70F.

 

[DudeBrew]

I have used one and works the best, make a counter flow chiller. It's cooled from boiling to pitching temp instantly. Look up the instructions, it's not to hard to make it, a very limited amount of soldering like four, six pieces of copper together and wallla!! One amazing beer making tool...one idea of advice that I did with mine is get a fifty foot garden hose, that way you have extra hose to reach for a faucet, some instructions show barely a foot on on the hose endings.

 

[nathan]

with cfc, put garden hose QD's on the fittings and it will be easy to use. I also have qds on the wort path for my pumps, but of a different type.