Hello All,
Just bought a Whisper Aquarium Pump for aerating my wort pre-fermentation. It is a very simple device that I plug in and, with the appropriate size hose, gives off plenty of oxygen to make the wort nice a bubbly (and who doesn’t like a nice bubbly wort before pitching?). I have one question for anyone who also uses this device?
1. How long should I let the pump aerate the wort for?
Cheers
I have been using 60-90 seconds of O2 from a red bottle, with your pump is it just pumping in air? Is there an online filter (having heard people use them to aerate wort that way.) No experience with your pump, but just a thing or 2 to think about
With the air pump, let it go as long as you like. An inline filter is important.
When I use the pump, I run it until foam comes out of the fermenter.
I think you would be better off with a stainless steel stone to create small bubbles.
IIRC it takes 30-60 minutes to get to 8ppm with an aquarium pump. Denny and others have more recent experience with this so are probably better guides. Most recent advice I heard was to pay more attention to properly aerating your starter and then just pitch a crap-ton of healthy yeast. If the yeast doesn’t need to bud 5 times then wort oxygen probably isn’t as important.
I use pure O2 so my time is less than 100 secs. With air the good news is you can’t overdo it. The bad news is I don’t have any good advice for where “good enough” is.
I guess I just assumed that was part of the deal. Without the stone you’re not getting much aeration.
Good point. I also assumed a 500 micron stone. Everything I have read suggests that without a stone most of the oxygen simply escapes out the top and does not get into solution.
Alright can someone explain the importance of the stainless steel stone?
Also, I almost always have starters for pitching. I use a magnetic stir plate. Does that mean aeration isn’t as important?
It has many tiny holes in it that create many tiny bubbles that get absorbed by the wort, thus oxygenating it.
Without tiny bubbles, you’re just passing air through the wort with minimal pick up.
Aeration is still important. There’s a lot of discussion on other threads about stir plates and the degree to which they do or do not provide oxygen to the yeast. Regardless, they are not providing oxygen to the wort, only to the starter (if at all).
If you read the voluminous threads on the “Shaken Not Stirred” method, it’s recommended there that you pitch your starter at high kraesun (I can never spell that right). I think this minimizes the need to oxygenate your wort, but does not eliminate it. Anyway, I haven’t changed my starter practice so I don’t know the details of SNS.
I’ve found that even with a good SNS starter you probably need to aerate to some degree. I recently had a couple of brews not attenuate as well as they have in the past. The main difference was that I forgot to use my mix-stir to aerate before pitching the starter. The beers were still fine, just less predictable in terms of expected attenuation.
YMMV here as well depending on how you transfer wort from your kettle to your fermentor. My transfer process involves very little splashing and thus probably not much aeration. Other people’s transfer procedures may introduce enough oxygen that it should all work out.
I’ll second all that. At least with my setup, it’s pretty obvious when the wort is getting close to saturation - for a few minutes, almost no bubbles make it to the surface, but at around 10 min it’s climbing out of the bucket.
It doesn’t have to be stainless; I use the cheap plastic ones from the pet shop and just throw them out every couple batches. The important thing is that it can be sanitized.
+2. I use a mix stir until the foam hits the top of the bucket.
Dudes, this has been incredibly helpful. Thank you all for the support.
I hope to see some of you at the HBC!
Cheers