Oxygenating big beers

[Che Soffe]

Hi,

I'm looking at brewing some big beers soon for next winter.
I want to brew a barleywine and a smoked Ris both over 10%.
However I have never brewed a beer this big and have no way to oxygenate my wort.

How do you guys go about big beers like this?
What methods of oxygenation do y use?

Cheers

[Cain Harland]

I airate rather than oxygenate. I'm sure a proper oxygen stone and tank is much better but mine cost almost nothing and does the job. I connected a male quick disconnected to the pipe from an old bottling wand with a short bit of tubing and a couple of hose clamps so I could connect it to the end of my brewery hoses. Then I poked a bunch (maybe 100) tiny holes in it with pin I heated on the element on an angle so the air going though travels in a similar direction to the wort flowing through the pipe. If you try to push wort through it real fast it comes out the little holes but if you dial it back a little it has a venturi effect and sucks air in the little holes which mixes with the beer, you can go pretty fast and still get a lot of airation but I'm usually doing a final pass of my counter flow chiller having already whirlpooled with it to chill the beer that last little bit so I go slow to get more chilling. Not my idea, saw it somewhere on interweb.

[Peter Smith]

Do you know anyone with an oxy / acet welding set? local garage / farmer etc lots around.

The oxygen from this will work fine...  so all you would need is a stone on end of a wand, (desperate measures ston on end of silicone hose.    you can push the end of the oxy set into the 1m of  hose etc.

I epoxied my sintered stone onto end of a stainless racking cane.  

I don't attempt big beers or pilsners without oxygen and big starters, I am sure you can and many do, to me its like wearing a seatbelt.  You have invested all that dosh in malt/hops and often liquid yeast, hours of starter making and brewing.

[Dave]

I agree, all that time and effort with yeast, makes sense to oxygenate properly.

[Che Soffe]

Unfortunately I don't know anyone with a welding set. I know what the stones are like just looking at the best way to get oxygen to it.

[Tom]

Where's the best place to get a disposable cylinder regulator from? Any that are reasonably priced?

[Crusader-Rob]

gasshop.co.nz

[Che Soffe]

Which regulator works with the disposable cylinders?

[Dave]

I got mine from a place in Hamilton - they sell on Trademe. Search oxygen in the home brew section. Got the bottle and a regulator.

[Larry Mitchell]

This is something I'm looking in to, but seems a lot of money. How many barches to you get to one of those disposable bottles?

[Dave]

Not too sure - I'm about 6 brews into the bottle so far.....

[Kevin Sharp]

I was on the verge of buying an oxygen kit when I read this. The source of the advice is Eric Watson, a respected brewing consultant and he claims it is taught at Siebel and Weihenstephan. The gist is that you should never oxygenate wort, you should oxygenate yeast and unless you have a dissolved oxygen meter you will most likely kill the yeast if you use pure oxygen. So the best way to oxygenate is to continuously bubble air through a stepped starter. Don't use a diffusion stone for this or your yeast will climb out of the flask.

The theory behind this approach is that you can either grow a population of yeast in your wort that is sufficiently large and healthy to ferment it, or you can pitch a large , healthy population to start with and discourage yeast growth in the wort. Eric contends that growing yeast in wort leads to excessive higher alcohol and ester formation. Also if you use pure oxygen and can't control the dissolved concentration then you're going to generate staling compounds that will reduce the shelf life of your beer. This is a problem if the beer is an IRS or barley wine that you want to mature for a year or so. The work done at New Belgium to replace oxygenation with addition of olive oil to the yeast was with view to improving the shelf life of Fat Tyre, and that's only a 4.5% beer with a recommended shelf life of 6 weeks.

The caveat with Eric Watson's advice is that his brewing style is very Germanic - he specialises in very clean lager and alt beers.  Jamil Zainasheff suggests that for most beers you want to aerate the wort a little in order to  generate sufficient esters to match the style.