Apparently, for a healthy fermentation, yeast requires oxygen initially and so there is a requirement for dissolved oxygen in the wort for the yeast to chew on, so the norm is to aerate the wort by vigorous stirring or similar prior to pitching. When this oxygen has been consumed, the fermentation continues anaerobically and in fact it is desirable that oxygen uptake is then minimised.
I read on here somewhere that someone had spent 10 minutes aerating a kit wort. I assume they thought that the longer they did it the more oxygen they would introduce.
The thing is it won't. Oxygen, unlike CO2, is not very soluble in water, and solutions quickly become saturated, and after that won't retain oxygen it will just bubble through and out.
So there's no real benefit spending ages and ages with a beating spoon, and this is especially the case if you are using mainly tap water to make up a kit which will be pretty much oxygen saturated in the first place, more so if it comes from a sparkler tap. You might need to a spend longer if you have used bottled water with your kit, and you will certainly need to spend longer still if you have boiled the wort as in AG or extract brewing and stripped the wort of oxygen in the process but even then many minutes of vigorous thrashing won't make much difference after a certain point since the wort will have become saturated early on.
My rule of thumb is to pour into the FV from a height and then use a spoon to aerate the wort for a short while but when there is a lot of foam on top that's it, job done.
I read on here somewhere that someone had spent 10 minutes aerating a kit wort. I assume they thought that the longer they did it the more oxygen they would introduce.
The thing is it won't. Oxygen, unlike CO2, is not very soluble in water, and solutions quickly become saturated, and after that won't retain oxygen it will just bubble through and out.
So there's no real benefit spending ages and ages with a beating spoon, and this is especially the case if you are using mainly tap water to make up a kit which will be pretty much oxygen saturated in the first place, more so if it comes from a sparkler tap. You might need to a spend longer if you have used bottled water with your kit, and you will certainly need to spend longer still if you have boiled the wort as in AG or extract brewing and stripped the wort of oxygen in the process but even then many minutes of vigorous thrashing won't make much difference after a certain point since the wort will have become saturated early on.
My rule of thumb is to pour into the FV from a height and then use a spoon to aerate the wort for a short while but when there is a lot of foam on top that's it, job done.
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