Aeration of wash

[Jaxom]

My first rum wash had it's problems. Most of which I've rectified now. One thing I'm curious about is adding air to the wash before pitching the yeast in. Seems to me my wash didn't bubble as much as I had expected. I was getting a good solid pea sized bubble out my vapor lock every few seconds, but I never seen anything really happening ontop of the wash. Of course this could be due to not know how much water I had added to the molasses and sugar.

Would it be of any benifit to buy a small fish tank air pump and a stone and drop that in there for a while before adding the yeast? (I've heard this done with sugar washes somewhere).

tia

Jaxx

[Uncle Jesse]

sure, but i'd buy one of these:

http://www.morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=16608" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[booger]

Lots of homebrew shops sell stainless steel stones that you can hook on an aquarium pump to aerate the wort...but I've never bought one or used one. I just make it a point to spash the heck out of it when pouring it into my fermenter (I happen to use a conical, a carboy or a demijohn depending on the size of the batch I'm fermenting - doesn't matter). Use a hydrometer to make sure you've got a reasonable OG and if you need to agitate (french for shake the snot out of it) to get plento of O2 into the wash, should go crazy. And don't be afraid to add yeast nutrient...does not add flavor and helps if you're doing a high gravity / high alcohol wash.


Remember, free advice is worth what you pay for it.

[Guest]

My first rum wash had it's problems. Most of which I've rectified now. One thing I'm curious about is adding air to the wash before pitching the yeast in. Seems to me my wash didn't bubble as much as I had expected. I was getting a good solid pea sized bubble out my vapor lock every few seconds, but I never seen anything really happening ontop of the wash. Of course this could be due to not know how much water I had added to the molasses and sugar.

Would it be of any benifit to buy a small fish tank air pump and a stone and drop that in there for a while before adding the yeast? (I've heard this done with sugar washes somewhere).

tia

Jaxx

How much and what kind of yeast did you use?

[seedsprout]

I have a hospital oxygen tank, would it be beinifital to use it for aeration purposes since it's presumably pure oxygen with hopefully low to no microbs?

[Jaxom]

Guest,

15 grams (3 packets) of EC-1118. As per a recommended recipie by another member.

[Uncle Jesse]

hospital oxygen tanks are perfect.

[Grayson_Stewart]

You have PURE oxygen in that tank that you plan to aerate your wash with? How long do you plan to aerate and at what volume of gas? You may want to do that outside your home or garage because you could possibly cause a dangerous fire using pure oxygen. I definately wouldn't smoke anywhere near it.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse8.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Guest]

Guest,

15 grams (3 packets) of EC-1118. As per a recommended recipie by another member.

I usually use nutrients...and airate the heck out my wash when I first start it.

[Uncle Jesse]

my local brew shop sells hospital canisters of o2 for aeration of wort.

use a fine metal diffusing stone and run for a minute perhaps, that's all you need.

[Uncle Jesse]

here's how it's done.

at most breweries, the wort is aerated after it passes out of the heat exchanger. i have seen several setups where hospital type o2 canisters are connected to a bleeder valve which operates inline in the stainless steel tube which carries the wort to the fermenter.

as the wort is pumped to the heat exchanger, it is cooled. as it passes out of the heat exchanger, o2 is fed in via the bleeder valve, oxygenating the wort immediately before it is pumped to the fermenter.

[seedsprout]

Sounds good, I was hoping it was worth the effort, and don't worry 'bout any explosions I have plenty of experience with them .

[Arnie_sla]

I hope you are just talking about aerating the wash at the start before you close the lid and seal with an airlock???

If you are thinking of aerating during fermenation then perhaps the extract below may be worth reading. This is from Tony's homedistiller.com site

"Oxygen
During fermentation, yeast has a couple of choices. If it has oxygen available to it, it will be able to reproduce quite rapidly (doubling every 3 hours). If there is only limited oxygen available, it will turn its task to producing ethanol and other products (about 1300 in all), like higher alcohols (sometimes called fusel oils), esters, organic acids, and carbonyl compounds. To get good initial growth of the yeasts, you want to have a bit of oxygen available - but you can do this simply by stirring the wash vigorously when disolving the sugar. Once you have added the yeast, it is critical to seal the container such that air cant get in, but you can still let the CO2 out, by using an airlock. To minimise the amount of other volitiles produced, make sure that you are using a yeast designed for the job, and keeping it happy with nutrients & with a stable temperature.

Fizz writes ..
..for those of us who have heard about the need for oxygenating the water prior to pitching the yeast and (like me) cannot afford extra equipment to do this I would recommend (if you have one) a kitchen stick blender, like what you use to make soups or sauces etc. 2 minutes in that baby and the water had that much O2 in it, it turned milky !
If you're going to use an airstone to aerate the wash, Mecakyrios recommends ..
1.) I HIGHLY recommend for you to use an in-line HEPA air filter. This will allow for the air going through it to be essentially sterile when it comes out through the air stone. This aids in protecting your wash from becoming infected with unwanted nasties.

2.) I would recommend using a racking cane with a small piece of tubing connected to your air stone. Let me try to explain better: You have you air pump connected to the correct length of tubing to get to your wash. You connect that tubing to your racking cane. To the other end of the raking cane you add a small piece of tubing, and to that tubing you put on your air stone. Then you submerge the air stone by placing the raking cane into the wash. What this will do for you is allow you to position the air stone where ever you may need to, but more importantly it will keep the stone from floating to the top of the wash. By using the raking cane (or similar device) method you now have more control over the air stone while making sure that it remains submerged.

There are brew shops that sell both of these products. Some even sell special "air wands" that come with both the filter and a special "wand" that keeps the air stone submerged.

If you would like more information, or at least a look at some products for this topic, I would recommend going to http://www.williamsbrewing.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow. Go to the fermenting equipment section and then go to "Wort Aeration" section to look at some products that deal with this issue.
Ted Palmer writes ..
In order to properly "grow up" a series of yeast starters you must aerate the wash with sterile air or pressurized oxygen (O2). The reason for this is that yeast cells bud or reproduce only when there is enough oxygen present to grow. During fermentation yeast cells will still bud, but at a slower rate since it has to pull oxygen out of chemicals. The amount of O2 required is small, on the order of 20 microliters per ml. to support the budding phase.

So how do you put O2 in your wash?

Sterile air:
Pump air through a 0.02 micron filter and then a stone (fish tank bubblers work well) into the wash. If you can't get a filter use a jar setup like a thump barrel only put a stone on the inlet pipe, fill this with hydrogen peroxide halfway full. pump air through this jar and then a stone into the wash. Run this setup 20 - 30 seconds for each liter of wash.

Pressurized O2:
Use any tank of pure oxygen fitted to a stone on a length of tubing, run for 5 - 10 seconds for each liter of wash.
Aerating a fermenting wash will result in one hell of a lot of yeast and very little alcohol. Aerating a fermenting wash for even a short time will oxidize flavor components including ethanol !!!"

[booger]

Gettin' yer brew up off the lees after the fast part of the fermentation makes for a much better tastin' brew.), and get a good starter goin' with yer yeast.

Both of these are excellent points. I'm fortunate that I have from my homebrew days a nice assortment of fermenters, and my current method of choice is to do a primary fermentation of about a week to 10 days (I don't use turbo yeasts) in a conical, I dump the trub, allow to settle for a few more days and then rack it into glass and let it sit in a dark closet for a month or so.

If you get a good supply of carboys going you can bite the bullet and get some good wash aging - makes a huge difference in the quality.

And take the time to do a simple starter...only takes an extra 24 hours or so, use yeast nutrient and let the little yeasties get a head start. You'll be very pleasantly surpised with the results.

[Uncle Jesse]

boiling your beer removes oxygen. since most mashes for distillation arent boiled, aeration won't be as critical.

at least agitate by pouring bucket to bucket.

[booger]

particularly it's a "Vvessel" I want.

I really thought long and hard about a v-vessell...the biggest problem I had was that the really cool idea of the wall mounted fermenter makes it potentially a royal pain to fill the fermenter.

Mine is a 6.5 gallon like this (http://www.mivamall.com/Merchant2/merch ... t_Code=f65" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow) and I picked it up for about $95 (but can't remember where). Best $100 I ever spent.

Anyway, I built a cart from a dolly like they sell at home depot to move plants around, so I can fill it in my kitchen and then roll it out into my garage where I leave it to bubble away.