Aeration before pitching

[Spelt]

I finally broke down and got an aeration system after having several batches take two to three days to launch into a vigorous fermentation. This set up has an aquarium pump, hepa filter and a stainless scintered stone. Brewed an ESB yesterday, chilled down the wort and transferred to my glass carboy. Then I went to aearate it with the new set up. What a mess! Every 30 seconds this thing is foaming over the top of the carboy. Finally gave up on waiting for the foam to settle and just let the thing run for about 5 minutes. At that point enough beer was wasted that I thought I'd better shut it down.

Is this what on should expect with aerating? Am I doing something bass ackwards?

[hotrod38]

You need to set the regulator at the very lowest setting. I usually have the stone sitting in a bucket of sanitizer prior to using it. I will adjust the flow before sending it to the bottom of the fermenter. The slower the better. 02 needs to dissolve slowly into the wort. To fast and the 02 will just come out of solution causing it to foam all over the place. Let the 02 dissolve for 2-3 minutes. You should end up with very minimal foaming. I pitch my yeast after aerating.

[11amas]

Interesting, I used my aquarium pump with no stone at full blast and ran it for like 20 minutes knowing the huge bubbles wouldn't dissolve well and I never had any foaming issues. I wonder if the fine bubbles from your stone made more foaming? You know, the Pope uses fermcap in his better bottles since they are 6gal instead of 6.5-7 like large carboys and it helps to keep the foam down during fermentation; you might want to use some as you aerate in addition to slowing the air down. My air kit for fish tanks has restricters; you put them inline and screw the little thumb thing down to get exactly how much flow you want. If you still find too much foaming just dial down your flow.

I just got one of those huge E size O2 tanks and a stone; haven't used it yet though. The dry yeast I have used in my last two batches specifically says "no need to oxygenate" since it has all of the stored carbohydrates and unsaturated fatty acid reserves it needs.

What are people's opinions/experience with dry yeast, when pitching the proper amount of cells, and not aerating?

[Spelt]

This is the system I got:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/b ... ystem.html

No regulator valve included. I'll need to get some sort of screw clamp and see if that helps.

On a side note, fermentation is cranking right along by about 15 hrs from pitch despite 62 deg cellar temps. That's suggests my aeration helped no matter how messy.