Aerated Wort

Made a Milk Stout today! After I Fly Sparged I poured the wort into my boil kettle a little to fast and it cause it to foam up a bit. Before the boil, can aerated Wort hurt my beer?

What you are describing is hot-side aeration, and it is one of the many issues that brewers argue about. Some will say you destroyed your beer, while others will argue that there is no effect at all.

My take is that on any issue for which there is such disagreement, there is likely little if any impact. If it really did cause big problems, everyone would agree on it and there wouldn’t be an argument.

So don’t worry, your beer is fine.

I brewed a Russian Imperial Stout a few weeks ago. The whole event was a comedy of errors. One of those brews that just went wrong from the start. One of the many issues I had was when I doughed in to my MLT rectangular cooler, I stirred my steel mesh filter off the hose without knowing it. So when I began my sparge, I opened the valve and nothing came out. Long story short, I had to dump my entire mash into another cooler, repair my MLT, dump my mash back into my MLT and go from there. So I aerated my hot wort 2 times. And I mean it was a frothy mess. I planned on aging the beer but because I would up with only about 3.5 gallons due to my clogged Keggle, I just drank it. It tasted amazing. I didn’t notice any issues due to the hot-side aeration.

I’m from the camp that believes hot side aeration is a myth. There is a guy in my brew club who believes 100% in it. We both make pretty good beer.

According to Dr. Charles Bamforth, HSE is technically not a myth, but it’s also not something to worry about. The yeast will clean up the beer for you. His advice: do sensible things when handling wort upstream and focus on handling your beer perfectly after fermentation.

If you have about 90 minutes and what to hear directly from a (or the) leading expert on brewing chemistry: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/475

You have already consumed a RIS that you brewed a few weeks ago? You are the man!

I believe HSE would manifest down the road (poor shelf stability) if it were to manifest, but I’m sure you’re fine.

I agree, long-term storage is what might be affected by HSA.

People ‘argue’ about evolution too, but I’d just as soon go with the science.