Hi guys,
I’m planning on brewing a lager shortly and my past efforts have been good but not great. I’ve been reassessing all my brewing processes recently and have made a number of changes in an attempt to improve results, I’m now kegging in cornies, I have a fermentation fridge and I’m treating my water in an attempt to get the correct mash PH (although I don’t have a meter to test his and I have never got on with strips).
One area that I’m looking at improving is wort aeration. At the moment I drop wort (from height) from the boiler to a plastic bucket with tap to splash as and introduce O2, I then transfer from this bucket again from height into the FV, so 2 splashy transfers to introduce O2.
For the lager I am considering upping this to 4 or 5 transfers however in your experience:
- Is this required / does this improve the O2 saturation in the wort?
- Does this method present a high risk of contaminating the wort with airborne
nasties?
Having spent plenty recently on improving my set-up, any O2 injection equipment is a no-go at the moment so I am limited to more basic methods at present!
Cheers
Dan
Improving Wort Aeration
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
What type of yeast are you going to use? If it's dry then aeration is not needed.
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
Hi Rpt, surely all yeast, whether dry or liquid, needs dissolved O2 in the wort to consume during early fermentation?
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
There's a good episode of basic brewing radio from Aug7-2008 that made sense to me.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrew ... ration.mp3
My take from it is shaking/rocking the fermenter is as good a way of aerating the wort as any (assuming you're brewing small enough batches to be able to rock the fermenter) and it minimises exposure to possible infection.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrew ... ration.mp3
My take from it is shaking/rocking the fermenter is as good a way of aerating the wort as any (assuming you're brewing small enough batches to be able to rock the fermenter) and it minimises exposure to possible infection.
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
I haven't tried it myself yet, but venturi tubes are meant to be good. I'll be giving this a crack on me next brew.
Let's all go home, pull on our gimp suits and enjoy life
Brewing chat on slack - http://thelocal.stamplayapp.com
Brewing chat on slack - http://thelocal.stamplayapp.com
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
In theory dried yeast has been produced with sufficent reserves for cell wall synthesis (which is when oxygen is needed) making oxygen levels less critical.danwlx wrote:Hi Rpt, surely all yeast, whether dry or liquid, needs dissolved O2 in the wort to consume during early fermentation?
You mentioned correcting alkalinity - how are you doing this? Reason for asking is that if you use AMS/CRS you might be putting the sulphate above levels ideal for lager.
Cheers
Steve
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
Hi Steve, thanks for the info, I was unaware that dried yeast was more forgiving. Usually I would use phosphoric acid to reduce alkalinity but for this brew am planning on using a low mineral content bottled water (tesco ashbeck).
Re: Improving Wort Aeration
I make really good lagers and I only use one drop from the boiler to the FV, biggest improvement for me was pitching large volumes of yeast.