Any disadvantage to using a wine whip to aerate your wort? Seems cheap and easy compared to buying an aerating stone and O2, but I never see much said about it.
That works well. It gets as much O2 as vigorous shaking in less time and much less effort. That said, it will never get more O2 than you have in the atmosphere (somewhere in the neighborhood of 8ppm). It is commonly taught that you will benefit from having 50% more O2 than that (closer to 10 or 12 ppm). It’s what I use (I use the wine wand, but it’s the same sort of thing), and although I don’t have 12ppm beer to compare it to, I haven’t noticed off-flavors or bad yeast health. I’d say that it’s better than shaking (because no one really shakes a carboy for the 20 minutes they say to) but less good than the stone.
8 PPM? I thought the atmosphere was almost 20% oxygen.
I’ve heard the 8PPM for physically agitating the wort pretty frequently. I use the wine whip and I’ve always assumed this gets the same as a vigorous shaking which as already stated, is way more work and probably not as effective. Also, you get to use power tools which is always good in my book.
