I’m involved in a conversation over at HBT about the superiority of Pure O2 injection as opposed to Manual (MixStir/Shaking/Air Pump) Aeration and the ultimate flavor impacts on the final product.
Anyone else making fantastic beer without the use of Pure O2? If so, how are your higher gravity beers coming out in the absence of Pure O2?
I use a mix stir (wine degasser) and have been nothing but happy with it. One thing to note, and I guess this is head space dependent, but I need to add my yeast then stir or else the foam causes issues. Denny uses the same type of stirrer I believe.
I used a pump and stone in the past, but don’t care to take care of the stone.
I know plenty of people that use pure O2, just not for me.
I use a Mix Stir for everything except for really big beers (1.100+). I used to use O2 for everything and can tell zero difference (lag time, attenuation, off flavors) in sub-1.100 beers where I use the Mix Stir. My method is to use the mix stir in buckets until the foam is at the top of the bucket, then pitch. On 1.100+ beers I still use O2.
IMHO, I make great beer or I have low standards. For big beers or large batches, I bubble air through my starters. Also for big beers I aerate twice, the second time 12-24 hours after pitching. However, I do not consider myself an expert at big beers.
Edit: I usually do a few days of “open” fermentation in a bucket fermenter with the lid on loosely for big beers.
I think people let the gizmos and whirly gigs trick their brains into noticing flavor differences.
MixStir: good enough for you guys, good enough for me.
I may bump up to 2 gallon batches, grab a 3 gallon carboy and buy a MixStir.
However you deliver sufficient oxygen for an optimal fermentation is the best way to do it 
I used to shake and it worked very well. I use O2/wand and it works very well. Difference is the effort I put in, that’s all.
Especially when you’re talking 1 gallon batches, no need for anything but shaking IMO.
My favorite thing about the mix stir is I can’t break it.
I used an aquarium pump and a diffusion stone for a while, but went back to using a nineties staple at the end of the tubing that runs between my kettle’s ball valve and my fermentation vessel. The wort mixes with air as it passes the holes, which are drilled downward at a 45-degree angle.
I’ve seen that before, and you’ve posted it once or twice. So simple.
I wonder how well the aeration tips that fan out the wort work. I had one way back, but that is when I used a 3/8" barb on my kettle. I brew with a single kettle and was tired of the flow rate when collecting my strike and sparge water.
Absolutely. I was just getting frustrated talking to a poster on the HBT who was adamant that Pure O2 was the ONLY surefire way for making great beer.
They didnt come right out and say this but that was the point of their posting.
I believe this was the post that got my interest and sparked some debate:
"While these methods are adequate for making beer, they are not optimal if your goal is to make the best beer possible.
No matter what technique you apply with air, you’ll never get above 8ppm oxygen in your wort due to the fact that air is only 21% oxygen. This is enough for low gravity ales, but high gravity ales and all lagers require 10-14ppm O2. This can only be achieved by using pure oxygen.
Investment in an O2 setup will significantly improve the quality of all your beer."
Ahhh… pontificating on the internet. 
I listened to those people in the beginning of my brewing career, but have switched back to the mix stir. I didn’t see a difference in the quality of my beer (citizen science!) when using pure O2 and I didn’t care to keep the stone up. Perhaps if I get bored and money is burning a hole in my pocket, I’ll add an in-line O2 thing to my chiller - but it seems kinda pointless.
Edit: I think Steve, Jon, and I are actually the same brewer but in different states. Ha. 8)
I have never, in over 500 batches, used pure O2. I’m not convinced it’s at all necessary on the homebrew scale, even for big beers. My hunch is that confirmation bias contributes to much of the belief pure O2 improved one’s beer. Again, just a hunch.
It’s entirely possible. I just need you to come help me design a basement bar/paradise like yours. ;D
It’s not a matter of telling the difference in flavor, I’ve just had less attenuation issues since switching to pure O2. I know it’s probably a waste, but I brew a lot of lagers (50-75% of my batches) so I want to make sure I start off with good amounts of dissolved O2.
And a stone isn’t hard to keep up. Some of y’all use pH meters…now come on, don’t give me that excuse that a stone is hard to maintain…
But maybe I’ll have to get my mixstir back out and give it a go…
Quick answer, yes, I brew pretty dang good beer with manual aeration.
I stir gently while chilling until I hit about 100 degrees, then start aerating/stirring until I hit my target temp. By this point I have 6" plus of foam on the top of the kettle, transfer into fermenters, pitch, and clean up.
I think part of the reason that I was going back and forth with this person was two-fold:
1.) The OP over at HBT simply asked if his manual aeration technique was solid and for people to respond. Many did saying that they used the exact same method (insert shaking/aquarium pump/mixstir, etc.) of manual aeration. Then, as often happens, someone invariably has to come along and say, “…that will make good beer, but if you want to make excellent beer…”. Strike 1.
2.) After many exchanges about scientific articles, sources and the likely lack of a perceivable taste difference, we got this nugget:
Recommend you read “Yeast” by Zainisheff and White, specifically pages 77-84 where they go into great detail about the O2 requirements of different types of worts, and controlled tests that have been done showing how only using air is woefully inadequate in many (but not all) cases.
They cite multiple primary peer-reviewed journal sources in the text that I’m not going to bother listing here.
The point that some are missing is that pure oxygen is not necessary to make beer, but it is necessary to make the best beer possible. A 1.090 doppelbock made with the shake and pray method may ferment out, but it will be inferior to one in which the proper O2 levels were obtained at the time of pitching by injecting pure oxygen to levels of 10-14ppm.
The science is sound and the logic is simple. High gravity ale worts and all lagers require a high pitch rate and need high levels of oxygen to produce an adequate amount of sterols for healthy replication. Those levels have been determined by experiment to be > 8ppm, which can never be obtained by air alone due to the limited amount of oxygen present in air by nature.
Here is the whole post for anyone interested:
Interesting conversation but I am always hesitant to say X method makes better beer over Y method, especially when something as subjective as taste is concerned.
I’ve heard Denny say many times, and i’m paraphrasing, “If it doesn’t make the beer better than why do it.”
I bought an O2 canister a few years back, used it on a few batches, then piled it away with the rest of the questionable brewing gear purchases. I have been known to break it out once or twice a year for the really big beers, but even then I’m not sure it makes a huge difference. I don’t use pure O2 in my 18% melomels, and they turn out just fine. I’m not sure if you can draw an exact correlation to beer from that, but that makes me feel a bit more confident skipping the O2.
I brew smaller batches, so I probably overpitch when I use dry yeast. And for liquid yeast I’m typically either making a starter and pitching it at high krausen or brewing a style where underoxygenation isn’t necessarily a bad thing (i.e., styles where I want a bit more flavor expression from the yeast). In other words, I’m not necessarily the type of brewer that would necessarily see a lot of the purported benefits of pure-O2.
Nowadays, most of my beer is poured through a series of mesh screens to filter out hop trub before it hits the fermenter. I’m pretty confident that this is giving me all the aeration I need.
I think the true folly here is entering into an argument on HBT. There is a reason why many of us choose this forum as our home base. The attitude is much different 'round these parts.
I don’t care to hassle with a pH meter either.
I’ve killed stones through the years. The first was a barbed stone where the barb would always pop out. That one died due to poor superglue application. The second was a flared stone. “Learned my lesson with the barb,” I told myself. That stone met its maker when I left it to boil in a quart of water and forgot about it until I heard the stone singing on the stove top. I take partial responsibility for the first and total responsibility for the second. Like I said earlier, I can break a mix stir.
Man, why are you going through all that trouble to separate the trub? I think you’re wasting your time there. I know you brew smaller batches, but still…
And HomeBrewTalk is just as DIY and scientific, at the same time, as this place, if not more so. Do you read there or post there often? Everything one could need to know about brewing is on that site. I don’t think the attitudes are all that different, it’s just a different group of people, more of a broad spectrum of brewers.
Steve, I have one of the stones that is on a stainless steel wand. Best invention for aeration stones ever.
My beef is definitely not with HBT. 90% of the people that post there are great.
My problem, which carries over to real life and work as well, is not with someone having a strong opinion on something. I’m an engineer working in Nuclear so opinions backed up with technical expertise are valued. My real problem is someone telling another person that there is this way, my way, of doing it for the best results. Add in misconstrued or misunderstood scientific articles and technical information to back up opinions and my head starts to hurt.
This is especially true for something subjective like taste.
It’s like telling a guitar player, “You can make good sound with a Fender Twin Reverb, but if you want to make the best sound, you need a Marshall Superlead full stack.”
Both are equally valid tools in the hands of their users. The difference is in preference and comfort using that tool.
