How Much Aeration Is Needed?

[brotom7]

Made my first full ag on Sunday (after quite a few partials with up to 60% mashed grains) and thought all went well.
The only part I'm not sure about is the amount of aeration I gave the wort going into the fermenter.
I simply opened the tap on my urn standing on a table and let it fall into the fermenter standing on the ground thinking that would aerate it enough.
It's about a meter fall so it created quite a splish splash in the fermenter and at the time I figured it would be enough.
Cooled it to 10C in the fridge over night and pitched the Wyest 2206 on Monday noon.

No activity after 24h so I set the temp up to 12C but just a slight thin white foam after 48h that didn't even cover the whole surface.
Still now it's just a thin layer of white foam and now it's

To me it seems a bit slow, I've only done ales before at 18-20C and figure the lager will have a bit less activity but this seems a bit too slow.
I have two thermometers taped to the side of the fermenter with a bit of insulation taped over so I'm pretty sure the temp is correct.
The smack pack manufacturing date was just five six weeks ago so should have been good. It didn't swell as much as others have but I only gave it a few hours and it did still swell a bit and the little bag inside was smashed.
As far as I understand it's not really important for the pack to swell, one can just pitch it as is but will it then start slower/take longer to get going?
Or was the aeration not enough?
Or is a lager yeast at 10C just this slow, I only have a bunch of different ale yeasts to compare with, my last was a Belgian at 20+ and it had some serious krausen after 24h.

 

[Ross]

Hi Brotom7,

All sounds fine, relax...

Lager yeasts are bottom fermenting (ales top fermenting) hence the lack of krausen.
For cold pitched lagers, you really should pitch 2 packets or build a starter. If you want to pitch straight from 1 packet, pitch at 18c & drop the temp after 24 hrs.

cheers Ross

 

[NeilArge]

Made my first full ag on Sunday (after quite a few partials with up to 60% mashed grains) and thought all went well.
The only part I'm not sure about is the amount of aeration I gave the wort going into the fermenter.
I simply opened the tap on my urn standing on a table and let it fall into the fermenter standing on the ground thinking that would aerate it enough.
It's about a meter fall so it created quite a splish splash in the fermenter and at the time I figured it would be enough.
Cooled it to 10C in the fridge over night and pitched the Wyest 2206 on Monday noon.

No activity after 24h so I set the temp up to 12C but just a slight thin white foam after 48h that didn't even cover the whole surface.
Still now it's just a thin layer of white foam and now it's

To me it seems a bit slow, I've only done ales before at 18-20C and figure the lager will have a bit less activity but this seems a bit too slow.
I have two thermometers taped to the side of the fermenter with a bit of insulation taped over so I'm pretty sure the temp is correct.
The smack pack manufacturing date was just five six weeks ago so should have been good. It didn't swell as much as others have but I only gave it a few hours and it did still swell a bit and the little bag inside was smashed.
As far as I understand it's not really important for the pack to swell, one can just pitch it as is but will it then start slower/take longer to get going?
Or was the aeration not enough?
Or is a lager yeast at 10C just this slow, I only have a bunch of different ale yeasts to compare with, my last was a Belgian at 20+ and it had some serious krausen after 24h.

As many others on this forum will tell you, if you want to make a c. 20 litre lager, you need to make a starter with your Wyeast to get the right number of yeast cells into that wort. There are lots of threads and stickies on this under different fora. Everything should be okay, but you'll need at least a litre starter next time.

Best of luck (from one who's had the same drama before and lived...)

ToG

 

[loftboy]

Just give it some time. I've used WY2206 before & found it to be a slow starter. It's worth the wait.

 

[NeilArge]

Hi Brotom7,

All sounds fine, relax...

Lager yeasts are bottom fermenting (ales top fermenting) hence the lack of krausen.
For cold pitched lagers, you really should pitch 2 packets or build a starter. If you want to pitch straight from 1 packet, pitch at 18c & drop the temp after 24 hrs.

cheers Ross

+1 wot Ross said. He just beat me there .

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I believe that starters and proper pitching rates are important - If I were making a lager, say 23L of 1.048 and I had a less than one month old smack pack or tube... I would make a 3.5L starter on a stirplate and LOTS bigger if I was using a simple starter (7-10L) ... bigger again if the smack pack is older than a month.

Having said that - I'm not also saying that there will be much wrong with your beer or that it will be bad. I just suspect it wont be as good as it wold be with a proper sized starter.

As for aeration - I also think that what you did qualifies as "the bare minimum" - there are lots of different opinions about how important aeration is, I'm with the very important side of the argument, but I wont babble, I'll just give you what i think is the most appropriate advice.

Aerate as much as you can stand - the more the better. So if you have the patience to shove an airstone in your wort and spend 1/2 an hour oxygenating, thats great. Have the money to buy a little 02 cylinder and give it a shot of the pure stuff?? Fantastic... but if all you can bring yourself to do is give the fermentor a good shake, do that....

The more oxygen you can get dissolved the better, but once again, it doesn't mean the bare minimum is inadequate... its just not optimum.