Finishing up my brew day on a 1.085 scotch ale only to find that my aeration stone has grown some funk. Time to head to the LHBS.
Ouch, I boil mine after every use, air dry, and store in a zip lock. No problems in 4 years
I do the same, but for some reason it formed some weird beige crust. I have the SS wand on this one, think I’ll go with just a stone on the next.
eyy send me some of that brew 
That definitely sounds like a delicious brew. Right now I have a smokey Irish Red Ale going into secondary tomorrow.
Hi 69franx, good idea.
Also possible you are getting mineral buildup on your stone. My stone goes from the wort to PBW, gets rinsed with hot water then boiled in distilled water in a small saucepan. Periodically I’ll soak it in star san made with distilled water to help remove any mineral buildup.
I generally boil it both before and after use, because it’s easy and provides extra insurance.
I learned the hard way early on that PBW and the like can cause a buildup that is hard to remove, even with acid rinses, as the pores can be inaccessible to the rinse, as can slowly air drying. This is especially a problem with a 0.5 micron stone. I found that the best way to clean a stone is to flush it with water and then gas, and give it an overnight soak in a stronger than usual solution of iodophor. This will dissolve away any organic material (works like bleach, but safe on stainless) without leaving a deposit of its own. Then flush again with water and gas. Pushing all the water out rather than slowly air drying is the goal here. Since adopting this I’ve never had any problem with any residue in a stone. (Building some implement to allow backflushing the stone is useful too.)
Flushing with gas seemed to me to be an expensive waste of good oxygen, so I tried my bicycle floor pump (Schrader end) and found that it worked quite well! It is a bit awkward to hold the stone on the end of the hose with one hand while pumping with the other, but it once set up it pumps a good volume of air through the stone in a jiffy.
I dont use O2 to flush it, I use CO2. That would be expensive with oxygen. I figure the CO2 is dry, and it doesn’t take much.
I don’t keg, so I don’t have CO2. The only pressurized gas cylinders I have are oxygen and propane.
Actualy, I do have pressurized CO2 but it is in a Sodastream cylinder and doesn’t have fittings that allow for more general-purpose use.