How to install the Wort Aeration Stone and oxygenate wort

 Click here for the Wort Aeration Stone product page

 

This video describes how to install the BREWHA Wort Aeration Stone and oxygenate wort as well as discussing the benefits of aeration and the other equipment necessary for best oxygenation of the wort prior to fermentation.

 

Click here for the Wort Aeration Stone product page

 

Full text transcript:

Hi, and welcome to another BREWHA video. In this video we are going to look briefly at how to aerate wort.

Wort aeration is important in that it puts oxygen into the wort, which is necessary for the yeast in fermentation to build healthy cell membranes. Without the oxygen, the yeast cannot form as strong a cell membrane and this may lead to off-flavors in your beer, and worse case, might even lead to the yeast not being able to finish/complete fermentation due to growing alcohol levels inside the beer [damaging the yeast cells].

So, in order put oxygen into the beer, you need a Wort Aeration Stone. This is a 2um stone that puts small bubbles up through the beer [wort] so that there is maximum interaction and diffusion from the air into the beer [wort]. The Wort Aeration Stone is available online.

In addition you are going to need a pump. There are a number of aquarium pumps that are available online for relatively inexpensive—from the very low (for example, this Fusion Quiet Power 200 is about $15. We recommend going with a slightly better pump—the Fluval Q2 has about double the power output and double the psi of the smaller model, and it also has a controllable dial do control how much air you are putting in. The extra power is useful because, particularly with the larger fermentors, there is quite a bit of downward water pressure on the air stone, and if you don’t have enough power to get the air into the wort, then you are going to have very limited air going in.

So, these pumps all come with a ⅛” hose barb and on the aeration stone there is a ¼” hose barb. In between those two, I recommend putting a filter. There are sterile syringe filters that can be purchased online on Amazon; they have the same size connectors as the pump so they would fit very conveniently onto the pump…they just slide on to it like that. This way you are not inoculating your freshly sanitized wort with molds and bacteria from the air. Once you have sanitized your hose, you will connect it up. This is standard aquarium size hose so it will connect to the filter. On the other side of it you need an adapter to go from ⅛” to ¼” which is the size of the Aeration Stone. This adapter can be found on Amazon through companies like Mettle Air for example. So that connects to the air hose, the air hose goes into the sterile syringe filter, the adapter goes intot he ¼” hose, and the hose goes on to the Aeration Stone. The Aeration Stone will connect to the bottom side of the stainless conical fermenter. We will open the valve on the bottom, turn the pump on and let air into the wort [correction: it is recommended to first turn the pump on, then open the valve to keep wort from saturating the stone and impeding the flow of gas].
If you are using pure oxygen, it is recommended that you aerate for a couple of minutes. If you are using air however, because the percentage of oxygen in air is only about 20%, it takes longer and for that it is recommended about 10 minutes. You probably want to aerate for about 15 minutes if you are on the Large conical fermenter / BIAC.

So that is it. If you have any questions about where to source any of these items or how to hook it up or other questions about aerating wort, feel free to send them in anytime using the form on the website.

Thanks for watching!

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1 comment

That’s pretty awesome… I can see hooking up an oxygen tank to this as well to speed up the aeration time.

Jeff Nuckolls

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