Eliminate O2 in Some Situations?

Hey, if it works, then it works. Gotta love the experimental nature of homebrewing.

 

I would still oxygenate the wort before the yeast pitch.

 

I use no O2 in some situations.

1. When I want to increase esters.
2. When I use dry yeast and the beer is less than 7% with an adequate pitch rate.
3. When I forget to use it.
4. When I can't find my big egg whisk.

Oxygen isn't a requirement for fermentation. Beer will be made. If you use none and like the result, you have done it right. However, using none can produce a very different result depending on the yeast, OG and pitch rate.

 

Just throwing this out there—one of the reasons to oxygenate is that oxygen (and just about every other gas, I think) has very low solubility in boiling wort. So it is essentially oxygen-free at the end of the boil, and I don't imagine it picks up very much in the ~30 minutes that it is cooling down. But if it's been sitting around at room temperature for 12 hours, it's possible that a fair amount of oxygen has dissolved into solution. I'm not saying you shouldn't add some oxygen, particularly for a high-gravity beer, but it's possible that there is more oxygen in solution than you would ordinarily expect.

 

Don't be mean...

 

You are correct that wort sitting around with 14.7 PSI sitting on it will get some oxygenation...

 

What are you doing with the whisk?

 

I believe it's an inside joke based on this and this (the joke continues further down in the thread). Joking aside, I think using a whisk is a reasonable way to aerate wort.

 

Why wont it work with high ABV potential wort?

 

That's a stretch simplifying it by saying oxygen isn't required for fermentation. For the anaerobic stage that's correct, but you really want to give the aerobic phase enough time for the yeast to reproduce and build up enough for a healthy fermentation and time to adapt to their surroundings.

edit: Sorry, not well written. Just woke up

 

Nothing wrong with using something the size of an oar to whip up some eggs. One 5 gallon bucket at a time.

 

While I'm sure you know what you're talking about, it's kind of a dangerous thing to throw out there... mostly because the *quality* of the beer that 'will be made' will almost certainly suffer if a n00b reads this and thinks "All this worry about oxygenation is unnecessary?".

Some of the largest issues people suffer with when starting out are stalled fermentations and under-attenuation - and nearly all of those can be avoided through proper oxygenation and pitching rate. Even if the latter is low (as it almost always is!), enough healthy yeast will grow *if* there's enough dissolved oxygen.

So, sure. Experienced (or, at least well-read) brewers can tweak D.O. levels and/or pitching rate to tweak the ester profile of their hefeweizen or belgian styles. One more tool to achieve the desired result... but in the vast majority of cases? Oxygen is your (yeast's) best friend in the pre-pitch wort!