Hot Wort Aeration

[Pollux]

I used to splash my concentrated extract wort into the fermenter through a stocking, never had a wet cardboard taste.

Think about it, if aeration of the wort while it's hot was such an issue, we'd simmer our wort instead of getting a vigorous boil going on.

 

[manticle]

Hi Manticle.
I'm more concerned about the loss of your avatar than HSA.
At various stages in my brewing past I used to strain hot wort though a common kitchen strainer - absolutely the best way to aerate it - yet I have never managed to oxidise a beer. I'm with the consensus on this; I think somebody just found a reason to worry which is pretty common in this field

BUT, your cooling regime provides you a couple of options which might have other positive effects on your beer, or effort:

Like if you wait for the wort to cool to about 60 you can take maximum advantage of natural cooling, since the temp difference to ambient is high, then chuck in your cold water and be right on or below pitching temp. This allows you to have a nice controlled start to fermentation (I find it's easier to control ferment temp when approaching from below).

Or if you chuck you cold water in at the start you knock down the temperature REALLY quick initially, which gets rid of any ongoing DMS production (a minor concern) and gives you maximum cold break for possibly cleaner and more stable beer. Nothing major but possibly useful tweaks.

Thanks for that.

No loss with the avatar - I haven't bothered uploading an image. It will give me something to do one day when I'm bored.

It's good to know areation is not worth worrying about for me.

Thanks all.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I used to splash my concentrated extract wort into the fermenter through a stocking, never had a wet cardboard taste.

Think about it, if aeration of the wort while it's hot was such an issue, we'd simmer our wort instead of getting a vigorous boil going on.

People misinterpret this all the time.

HSA absolutely, 100% happens - there is no debate about this, it occurs and occurs in measurable and observable ways.

The debate is not about whether it happens or not, its about whether it affects the flavour stability of your final beer - and its not the upfront flavour we are talking about ... its the flavor stability that it might affect.

So if you made a beer - and you kegged it up and drank it and it didn't taste like cardboard (only one of the possible flavours that HSA might contribute) then that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about whether the beer was effected by HSA or not. It says merely that your beer was not noticeably stale when you drank it. Every beer will stale eventually - HSA would influence how quickly the beer became stale and perhaps the type of aged characters it displayed, not whether it staled at all.

So a beer that was negatively influenced by HSA might start to display aged characters at 3 or 4 months - whereas all other things being equal a beer that had been treated with more care to avoid HSA might last 4 or 5 months before they showed. That's the sort of difference that HSA might make.

But - the difference other things can make to the shelf life of your beer, is so much more massive, that HSA is small potatoes. Post fermentation oxygen is insanely more important, as is storage temperature. Listen to that Brew Strong episode someone linked to above - it gives a lovely explanation.

If you don't make a starter, don't control your fermentation temperature, don't flush vessels and lines with C02 during transfers, don't have exceptional bottling practices and don't store all your beer in a fridge once its finished - then there are at least five things on your list of improvements to make, that are massively more important to the flavour stability of your beer than is HSA.

So HSA isn't a crock - its a perfectly valid phenomenon - that in all probability has bugger all to do with anything you might notice in your home brewed beer.

 

[mje1980]

People misinterpret this all the time.

HSA absolutely, 100% happens - there is no debate about this, it occurs and occurs in measurable and observable ways.

The debate is not about whether it happens or not, its about whether it affects the flavour stability of your final beer - and its not the upfront flavour we are talking about ... its the flavor stability that it might affect.

So if you made a beer - and you kegged it up and drank it and it didn't taste like cardboard (only one of the possible flavours that HSA might contribute) then that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about whether the beer was effected by HSA or not. It says merely that your beer was not noticeably stale when you drank it. Every beer will stale eventually - HSA would influence how quickly the beer became stale and perhaps the type of aged characters it displayed, not whether it staled at all.

So a beer that was negatively influenced by HSA might start to display aged characters at 3 or 4 months - whereas all other things being equal a beer that had been treated with more care to avoid HSA might last 4 or 5 months before they showed. That's the sort of difference that HSA might make.

But - the difference other things can make to the shelf life of your beer, is so much more massive, that HSA is small potatoes. Post fermentation oxygen is insanely more important, as is storage temperature. Listen to that Brew Strong episode someone linked to above - it gives a lovely explanation.

If you don't make a starter, don't control your fermentation temperature, don't flush vessels and lines with C02 during transfers, don't have exceptional bottling practices and don't store all your beer in a fridge once its finished - then there are at least five things on your list of improvements to make, that are massively more important to the flavour stability of your beer than is HSA.

So HSA isn't a crock - its a perfectly valid phenomenon - that in all probability has bugger all to do with anything you might notice in your home brewed beer.

If any of my beers lasts 3 months from the time i brew them, it's just about miraculous. Once they hit the keg, im looking at 3-4 weeks, the really standout ones are lucky to hit 2 weeks!!!. That's just by myself drinking 98% of it haha.

 

[Pollux]

TB, I'm not questioning that it exists, but as you said, it's effect is probably negligible for most home brewers.

While I do take measures to minimise splashing these days with my AG brews (i.e. I run a hose to my NC cube that is the right length to be just above the bottom), in the grand schemes of things it is not something I stress about.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

fair point,

its just that the way you phrased yourself, and the way a few people have talked about HSA - it seemed that there was a base level misunderstanding of what HSA was even supposed to do to your beer if it did effect it.

Sorry to use you as an example but -

"I used to splash my concentrated extract wort into the fermenter through a stocking, never had a wet cardboard taste"

Suggests to me that you would expect a beer to taste immediately of carboard if you engaged in HSA dangerous type behavior with it - and that sort of statement/sentiment is typical of what I read when I see people discussing the topic.

Even if you did taste some carboard in your beer at some point - you have no way of knowing if that is from HSA, or just from normal old oxygen ingress and age. Its not different, its just timeing, Stuff that you can only even tell, if you have such consistent technique that two different batches could reasonably be expected to age in exactly the same way over time. If you haven't got that - you haven't even got any idea if what you are experiencing is HSA or not.

Just trying to increase teh general background level of understanding out there - sorry to pick on your post as an example.

TB

 

[Adamt]

Think about it, if aeration of the wort while it's hot was such an issue, we'd simmer our wort instead of getting a vigorous boil going on.

I have thought about it... During boiling, there is steam produced which heads skywards, there's no way of any oxygen dissolving during boiling, even less so with a rolling boil.

 

[Pollux]

Fair call there TB, a poorly worded post on my behalf..

Adamt: That's another point there that I hadn't considered....

 

[manticle]

Long but very interesting explanation of HSA

Cheers mate. All those things help the understanding of people like myself wo are kind of new to the game and have a long way to go in understanding technicalities.

So once my beer is carbed up it should be in cold storage? My brews never last long but I'm wanting to change that.

 

[///]

But... one of the key reasons nobody much uses lauter grants and taps these days is to reduce hot wort aeration.

True, even my whirlpool would scare some!

 

[haysie]

I splash my mash cos i hate underletting, I splash my vorlauf, I splash my sparge cos I love stirring, I splash my runnings cos I hate the the hose IN the wort, I splash my chiller too fermenter because you are meant too, hmm but only below 27 degrees remember(what a wank), i splash when kegging cos I hate the hose IN my beer, i leave minimal airspace in my bottles. but

All the above negatives, as someone earlier suggested leads to instability!. The beer that was "everything" at 12 weeks is not the same beer v4 weeks later, and far more pronounced with lower alcohol beers. Yet its not chalk n cheese.

Newcastle brown, great beer when i can get it, bought a couple of stubbies the other week, on the first mouthfull the intense caramel was outstanding, have never had a better one, everything was better than usual, I then checked the date.... it was 4 months past its best by date. I put it down to instability of flavors at the time, and went back the next day and bought their last 2 stubbies.