Aeration of full grain wort

Hendrixcat

Any ideas on the best way to oxygenate a full grain wort batch? I've heard of 'oxygen stones' and complex sounding contraptions involving aquarium pumps. It can be quite important to provide the yeast with enough oxygen to get a decent primary fermentation going. Anyone with a preferred method or tips?

guildofevil

I used to sake the fermenter, but now I just don't worry too much about it.

I use an electric boiler with a spigot for my boil and I find that it gets aerated quite enough while it's pouring from the spigot into the fermenter.

Never had any problems with lag times.

bigears

I listened to a podcast on basicbrewing.com a while back and they interviewed a guy called Dave Hogsdon who founded Wyeast. He said there were an awful lot of technical solutions which weren't all they were cracked up to be. He suggested to basically shake the crap out of the fermenter. You can hear it on basicbrewing.com, they have an archive that lists all the episodes.

Hendrixcat

Excellent. That's one less thing to worry about and one less gadget required.

rubadub

I used to use a stainless steel strainer, one with small holes for straining spagettii. It would hold about 3-4litres, stuck it in the container and just kept pulling it up letting it drip down from a good height.

Shaking works fine too, better to do it on the side if you can to get maximum surface exposure to the air.