O2 regulators

[RubberToe]

Well I have an aeration stone now, but no oxygen.

I know I could buy this from PA or HD:

http://www.princessauto.com/pal/product ... -Torch-Kit

But that's a bit pricey for a cheap piece of gear, half of which I wouldn't use.

Another route is to find a medical O2 regulator but I'm not sure how much that would cost, something tells me it could be expensive. I'm also not sure if it would thread onto the disposable welding tanks.

Lastly, I could find a welding regulator and O2 tank. My best bet there might be on kijiji. A small tank could hold enough O2 for ages.

Ideas? Does anyone here use pure O2 for aeration?

Thanks,
-Rob

[mr x]

I had been looking at options for a while, but been sidetracked lately. i'd like to find out more about the medical oxygen option. IIRC, you can get a full O2 tank for just over $100 from the big welding suppliers. Probably last a homebrewer forever....

[mr x]

Here. If this stuff was usable, I'd be interested.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PORTABLE-OXYGEN- ... 2ebb49f3e4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Keggermeister]

http://morebeer.com/view_product/16614/ ... h_no_Barbs

http://morebeer.com/view_product/16606/ ... nks_w_Barb


I have this setup from morebeer with their o2 regulator. I have to admit that I don't use it much for o2 anymore, it is great for monitoring post chiller temp though.

I kind of wish I had a bigger o2 bottle, I found the CTC ones did not last long. Three batches at best.

[RubberToe]

I've read that the medical O2 regulators are best because you are regulating the actual flow of O2. With the welding regulators you are regulating pressure and you have to do a little more guesswork to calculate your ppm.

I think an ideal situation would be to have a 5lb welding tank with a medical regulator but I'm not so sure you could even do that. I'd settle for a welding setup given the right opportunity.

[mr x]

I think I have some small rotameters that might work for regulating flow.

[Bryan]

It would be nice to have an O2 set-up. Even with a pressure regulator, that would work. Just use use the same pressure each time, and taste your beer to judge the amount of time needed.

[RubberToe]

Look what I just bought:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/270907323666?ssP ... 083wt_1398

I'll only need one of course so if anyone wants to check em out when they get here that's cool. When the time comes I'll sell one for half my total cost. Also, if anyone's interested it looks like they have more.

-Rob

[chalmers]

X, I'll go in on that with you. I'd love the big one plus a small one. Big one for SCUBA safety.
Do we know if Brenton's can fill O2 tanks? If not, I believe Torpedo Rays and Diver's World do.

[mr x]

I sent that lady a message about the tanks. Need to know if they require hydros, and who will fill them locally. I stopped in to liquide air on the way home today. Fuck are they dumb. 200 for a tank, and 200 for a regulator. Idiots. I'm home here on the cell, so if you want to hit her up with questions, do it. It will be hard for me until friday. I am interested.

[RubberToe]

I asked about O2 tanks at Lawton's recently (they do a lot of medical equipment rentals) and I was told to check a place in Burnside called Vital Air or something like that.

I think the regulators (at least one of them) I ordered will fit a welding tank. I guess I'll find out when they get here.

[mr x]

The nimrod at LA had a hundred of the tanks from vital air in the shop. But he told me that you need a medical permit, blah blah blah. He was a fucking retard who didn't know shit. Check with Vital rasp, see what they say.

[erslar00]

I will check at work as well, we removed a shit pile of Medical Oxygen bottles from our aircraft a few years ago when we merged the regionals in an effort to standardize our fleet... if I remember correctly they're sitting in a warehouse collecting dust... I'll see if the company will part with them at a reasonable price... give me a few days to make some calls.

[mr x]

That would be great if it works out.

[NASH]

Medical flow regs are useless for any sort of dissolved O2 calculations in brewing so you went with the right choice on the standard pressure-type regs from ebay. You can drive O2 into wort at 1 L/minute or whatever rate but if you don't have a lot of very expensive equipment to measure the O2 that's coming out of your wort at the same time then you have no idea how much is getting dissolved. I've worked in a lot of breweries and have never heard of one with the sort of equipment required to do it. Dissolved O2 tests after the fact are a lot easier and make a lot more sense. But here's what most breweries do or if they don't they should....

Add O2 to wort during knock-out into the fermenter for say 30 mins. Track lag and fermentation times. Next week cut back O2 additions to 25 minutes, track lag and fermentation times. Next week cut back O2 to 20 minutes etc. Keep doing this until you see increased lag time and slower fermentation then add 5 minutes back to your O2 regime, you just found the magic number! This of course is all completely useless if you don't do hemacytometer counts for viability to pitch the correct cell count every time. It's also different for each different typpe/gravity beer you brew.

If I remember correctly medical grade O2 and welding O2 is basically the same thing except welding tanks aren't tested for sanitation or cleaned on every fill. An easy way around this is to add an inline sterile filter. In breweries we always use them even though we usually use medical grade O2.

Basically it's like this; you can't really add too much O2. Okay, you can perhaps run the risk of oxidizing the wort but that's dependent upon a lot of variables including wort temp and pressure in a closed system.

Compressed breathing air has a saturation point of 8mg/L dissolved O2 which by coincidence is the perfect, optimum number to shoot for on wort of standard gravity of up to 1.050 or so. Higher gravities can use more dissolved O2 although I've worked in a bunch of breweries that brewed barley wines or RIS and used only compressed breathing air with wicked results. That said if they had used pure O2 I'd expect to see slightly quicker fermentations and perhaps slighter lower FGs. In 5 years of brewing using only compressed breathing air on IPAs, Dubbels, Tripels and other high gravity beers down at John Shippey's Brewing Co I never once had an issue with fermentations or FGs although O2 would have been better on those big beers I'm sure. <End O2 rant/> The saturation point of pure O2 in wort is 32mg/L btw.

[John G]

I have access to some dissolved oxygen meters and will be checking my oxygen uptake rate at different l/min flows to see how long I need to have it on and at what flow rate. I'll post results as I get them.

[RubberToe]

Thanks, Nash, good info. Does anyone use scuba diving tanks to aerate their wort?

[NASH]

I have access to some dissolved oxygen meters and will be checking my oxygen uptake rate at different l/min flows to see how long I need to have it on and at what flow rate. I'll post results as I get them.

Excellent, oddly I was thinking about you in your little lab as I typed that

[Jimmy]

Thanks, Nash, good info. Does anyone use scuba diving tanks to aerate their wort?

Unless it's a O2 kit for divers, then it's normally just plain air in a tank (~21% Oxygen, 78% Nitrogen, 1% other shit)

[mr x]

Christ almighty. These people are fucked. VitalAir (who won't give you anything without a prescription), or Liquid Air (who don't know WTF they are doing, maybe they can, maybe they can't, bring the cylinder in and see....) are worse to deal with than NCM. It will be easier for me to steal the stuff.

[RubberToe]

I just got off the phone with Praxair.

The smallest bottle they sell are "knee high" bottles and cost $205. To fill that with O2 is another $39. Plus tax. Those bottles hold 3/4 cubic metres of O2, does anyone have an idea of how long that would last? How much oxygen do the little disposable bottles contain?

Maybe time to keep an eye open for a used bottle on kijiji. Also, be careful because some bottles are leased and have a contract attached to them. Praxair will lease a bottle for $15 a month or $45 / year; you buy the gas.

Edit: This is not "medical grade" O2. I don't know if we really care though.

-Rob

[mr x]

I wonder if praxair will fill the medical cylinders? I sent an e-mail to the head office of Liquid Air about our situation. I guess we'll see what happens.

[RubberToe]

With your standard brewers aeration stone it looks like you need anywhere from 1-3 L/min of O2 for 1 min to reach 10ppm in a 20L batch. The knee high welding tanks hold 750L of O2 so that would last me a _long_ time and definitely worth the $40. Even over a long period the cost of a new tank doesn't look so bad (still, I'm not doing it).

[mr x]

Let's see what larry finds out. And hopefully I can sit down and discuss this with chalmers tomorrow.

[mr x]

OK, chalmers is going to confirm with the dive people that they can do the filling, and just as importantly, hydrotesting on the cylinders. Larry is going to bring an O2 bottle with him to the grain buy so we can look at it.