9-17-06 Sunday: 02 aireation commentary

[IroPino]

I use a commercial welding oxygen tank with an inline sanitary filter that goes to a wand style stainless steel .05 mircon stone. I aireate with 02 at 40 psi for 30 seconds. Typicaly my starts are fast and agressive because I use both a yeast starter, (1000 to 2000 ml) and oxgenate. My fermentation starts are typicaly under three hours, and are verry agressive. I have to use a blow off tube into a bucket for about the first three days of fermentation, and I ferment in morebeer 6.5 plastic buckets. I am a ale brewer for the moment, and pitch at around 74F and ferment around 72-74F. Regardless of your 02 source it is EXTREAMLY IMPORTANT to use a sanitary filter. Anything that you can do to keep out the evil beer damaging critters from your wort, the better.

[Kaiser]

Regardless of your 02 source it is [b]EXTREAMLY IMPORTANT to use a sanitary filter.

I'm not using such a filter with a small welding O2 tank and I have not had any contamination problems yet.

Kai

[linuxelf]

I'm using one of those little red O2 containers you get a lowes. I'm on batch 6 with it, no problems.

[IroPino]

Kaiser, linuxelf,

May the Lord continue to bless you with great homebrew!

Now let me put on my micro-biologist hat on for the moment. Given sanitary protocol dictates that it is logical to use all available methods to mitigate the possibility of contamination. That being said, if you choose not to, and later get an infection, then go back and re-think your sanitation protocols.

In simple terms, if you play Russian roulette, don't get surprised if you get shot.

[Lufah]

I've done about 50 batches using welding O2 with no filter and no infections. I've also never heard of anyone having a batch get infected and thinking it came from their O2 source.

Can anything live for long in a pure O2 enviroment?

Travis

[Kaiser]

In simple terms, if you play Russian roulette, don't get surprised if you get shot.

Sanitation in brewing is always an imperfect thing. This is true for home and for commercial brewing. In home brewing you do the best you can to keep things sanitary. There are many good practices that will get you to a sufficient level of sanitation. Going beyond that may significantly increase the effort and may even reqiure that you buy additional equipment. But most of the time this won't buy you anything. One example of this would be building a germ free environment for brewing. Sure there are many home brewers out there who have done this and I evny them for that, but for most of us there are other things that we would get first before we seek to improve sanitation even further.

I for myself feel that my procedures are sanitary enough. Though I always look for ways to improve them w/o additional expenses or equipment. In order to check my level of sanitation, I genarally perform a sanitation test after Fix. This means taking a sanitized container (jar, test tube ..) and fill it with aerated but unpitched wort. Let this sit covered at a warm spot and see how long it takes for something to grow in there. It takes usually 2-3 days for the wort to turn cloudy and another 3-4 days for something to appear on the surface. This is sign of a sufficient sanitation practice. The test for my latest batch didn't fare so well though. But I believe that I got some brewing yeast in there since it started fermentation and didn't taste infected.

The simple answer is that I just don't have an inline filter for my O2 system. Though I plan to get one, it's not that high priority on my list.

IroPino, are you speaking from experience?

Kai

[linuxelf]

In simple terms, if you play Russian roulette, don't get surprised if you get shot.

You play Russian Roulette every time you brew a batch of beer. I think the chances of getting a contaminant from the O2 are so slight that it's neglegable. You're more likely to get an infection from the aeration stone not being sanitized well enough than from the O2 itself, I'd wager.

[BrewBum]

In simple terms, if you play Russian roulette, don't get surprised if you get shot.

Sanitation in brewing is always an imperfect thing. This is true for home and for commercial brewing. In home brewing you do the best you can to keep things sanitary. There are many good practices that will get you to a sufficient level of sanitation. Going beyond that may significantly increase the effort and may even reqiure that you buy additional equipment. But most of the time this won't buy you anything. One example of this would be building a germ free environment for brewing. Sure there are many home brewers out there who have done this and I evny them for that, but for most of us there are other things that we would get first before we seek to improve sanitation even further.

I for myself feel that my procedures are sanitary enough. Though I always look for ways to improve them w/o additional expenses or equipment. In order to check my level of sanitation, I genarally perform a sanitation test after Fix. This means taking a sanitized container (jar, test tube ..) and fill it with aerated but unpitched wort. Let this sit covered at a warm spot and see how long it takes for something to grow in there. It takes usually 2-3 days for the wort to turn cloudy and another 3-4 days for something to appear on the surface. This is sign of a sufficient sanitation practice. The test for my latest batch didn't fare so well though. But I believe that I got some brewing yeast in there since it started fermentation and didn't taste infected.

The simple answer is that I just don't have an inline filter for my O2 system. Though I plan to get one, it's not that high priority on my list.

IroPino, are you speaking from experience?

Kai

That is a pretty cook idea Kai, I have always wondered how long it would take to see infection or to see one period as I have never had one, at least one I could detect. It isn't a perfect test but it could give you an idea, I might try that and see what happens.

Nate