Question about oxygenation

[Professor Frink]

So I decided to oxygenate my wort for the first time today. I'm using an aquarium pump, an inline filter, some silicone tubing and an oxygenation stone. Two questions actually:

1) How long do people oxygenate for? I got about 10 minutes in before it started foaming over.

2) Do you reuse the oxygenation stone? Do you clean them out or just use a new one?

 

[tdavisii]

Oxygenation with a stone is a waste of time. You get less oxygen in the beer then if you shake the carboy for five minutes. To verify go to the wyeast website and read about oxygenation studies.
Just seems like one more thing to clean and worry about.

 

[WBC]

Oxygenation with a stone is a waste of time. You get less oxygen in the beer then if you shake the carboy for five minutes. To verify go to the wyeast website and read about oxygenation studies.
Just seems like one more thing to clean and worry about.

That statement is not quite clear. If using an air pump you have to pump through a stone for a long time when compared to shaking the carboy but both ways does work.

From Wyeast:

30. Approximately how long do you have to shake a 5 gallon carboy to get oxygen saturation (8ppm)?

45 seconds of vigorous shaking.

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31. How long do you have to run a stone with an aquarium pump to achieve O2 saturation (8ppm) in 5 gallons of wort?

5 minutes.
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32. How do you achieve higher than 8 ppm O2 levels in your wort? .

By injecting pure oxygen into your wort through a stone (1 min for 12 ppm). Or, by flowing pure oxygen into the carboy's head space and shaking for 20 seconds, twice.


Pure oxygen takes 60 seconds using a stone.

You should be shooting for 15 PPM to get maximum results according to wyeast and White Labs. We as home brewers don't have oxygen meters as a rule so we have to time what we do to get reasonable results. You can reuse an oxygen stone as long as it has been sterilized by boiling 15 minutes to kill anything deep in the porous material.

 

[tdavisii]

Let me rephrase. Both work but IMHO a stone is a waste of time when you can just shake the carboy and do the same job quicker and more effieciently.

 

[Bobby_M]

Efficiency goes out the window when you either drop your carboy or pull your back out. Save your nickles for an O2 regulator and stainless stone.