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George Schmidt
Intermediate Member
Username: Gschmidt
Post Number: 455
Registered: 08-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 05:57 am: | 
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There's a thread on BrewBoard about this, and I thought I'd ask the experts here for your opinion.
Sounds like an incredibly useful idea - add a couple drops of 35% peroxide to a starter as the sole aeration and get a good growth. No boiling the stone, no foam to deal with, just a few drops of an inheirently sanitary solution. I'm wondering if even a stirplate my be bypassed by adding a couple more drops every few hours throughout the ferment.
Any thoughts?
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ~~Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
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Fredrik
Senior Member
Username: Fredrik
Post Number: 2062
Registered: 03-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 06:41 am: |
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Intuitively I am sceptical that it is a good idea. It might proably work to a certain extent as far as the aeration is concerned, but I think peroxide more reactive than just dissolved O2. I think there is a risk of causing damange to the cells due to oxidation stress.
I haven't tried it, and even though it is likely to work to a certain extent, it sounds like a dangerous path.
This has been discussed before, somewhere and now I do not remember the links, but if I am not mistaken someone has tested this, and from what I recall the result was that, yes the peroxide did successfully provide O2 to the yest (good part) but they also form what I recall found flavour anomalities in the finished beer(side effect). That was speculated due to some slight damage on the cells done by the reactive peroxide.
IMO, aeration yeast is not that hard, and it hardly requires either pure O2 or any advanced setups. If you are starting to use peroxide, you might be able to aerate, but the chance is also that you might get yourself into other problems.
/Fredrik |
Fredrik
Senior Member
Username: Fredrik
Post Number: 2063
Registered: 03-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 06:43 am: |
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Just my thoughs though, but if anyone has tried it without side effects it would be quite interesting to hear about the results. Not only the performance, but also the flavour of the beer.
/Fredrik |
Joe
Junior Member
Username: Joe002
Post Number: 27
Registered: 06-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 07:43 am: |
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George - I found the Zymurgy article - March/April 2004 - For Geeks Only "Oxygen and Hydrogen Peroxide in Beer".
Looks like too much H2O2 can kill yeast. In a batch (not a starter) they recommend only 5 ml of 3% in 5 gallons. They focused on adding it (or O2 or just air) in wort, and had their best results with just plain old air. They didn't really discuss using it in a starter - except the warning about it killing yeast in too high a concentration. |
Bill Pierce
Moderator
Username: Billpierce
Post Number: 2812
Registered: 01-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 02:13 pm: |
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Hydrogen peroxide is toxic to yeast (and many other things). I would be very careful with it. |
PaulK
Member
Username: Paulk
Post Number: 174
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 04:29 pm: |
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Now here come the other threads of similar nature. Can I aerate my beer with OxyClean? Can I carbonate my beer with dry ice? |
Wayne Faris
Member
Username: Bugeaterbrewing
Post Number: 101
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 05:32 pm: |
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PaulK, I know you are just yanking people's chains with your post, but.... I have done a quick carbonation of root beer with dry ice. Stirred up a batch of extract and water in a plastic bucket (not one of my beer buckets) and tossed in a big chunk of dry ice. Was ice cold and nicely carbonated by the time I got it to the picnic half an hour later. In general though, I would not recommend the dry ice unless you know how pure it is. Could have all sorts of contaminants in it. |
PaulK
Member
Username: Paulk
Post Number: 175
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 06:40 pm: |
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Wayne - That was the point of my post. There's lots of things you COULD do in beer making but what you SHOULD do is likely another matter. I'm not advocating against innovative new ideas but there's so many tried and true simple methods that don't need to be re-tooled. |
George Schmidt
Intermediate Member
Username: Gschmidt
Post Number: 456
Registered: 08-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 06:51 pm: |
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Hmmm, I heard about the off flavors, which I why I thought it would only be useful for a starter. Assuming I decant the liquid, that shouldn't be a problem, right?
Joe, are you sure the Zymurgy article said 3%, not the 35% hydroponic stuff?
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ~~Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
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Joe
Junior Member
Username: Joe002
Post Number: 28
Registered: 06-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 27, 2005 - 08:32 pm: |
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George - yeah, I figured you would be interested in the % number in the article: “A target concentration of 8 ppm was used to calculate the volume of hydrogen peroxide needed. This turned out to be surprisingly small - only 5 milliliters of 3-percent H2O2 for a 5 gallon batch. The volume was added to the batch using a hypodermic syringe. (The small quantity needed gave us insight into why Dr. Fix's batch might have been over-oxygenated)." |
Fredrik
Senior Member
Username: Fredrik
Post Number: 2064
Registered: 03-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2005 - 07:59 am: |
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> Assuming I decant the liquid, that shouldn't be
> a problem, right?
Unless you have caused damage to the cells already? The you might have damanged cells about to ferment out your wort.
H2O2 as such if entering the cells most certainly not a good thing. Theoretically peroxides can do a lot of damage, and the yeast would have to try and protect itself from it. The question is still that maybe if it is used in low concentration, then maybe it might work with limited side effects, provided the peroxide is decomposed into O2 and water before it hits the yeast. I don't see why one could try it, as an experiment.
I just think that if you use air, the you are always "safe". There is no way to harm the yeast by overaerating.
/Fredrik |
q-ceps
Member
Username: Qceps
Post Number: 118
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2005 - 03:36 pm: |
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Very small percentage of the oxygen released by H2O2 will end up as dissolved O2. The rest will do damage.
In pure water, shaking or heating can accelerate recombination of H2O2 molecules that contribute one atom of oxygen each to produce bubbles of O2 (which also get physically dissolved). In the presence of organic matter, very few H2O2 molecules get to interact with each other. Most provide the super-toxic, higly reactive atomic oxygen to other substances they come in contact with and easily oxidize them, causing off-flavours, yeast death and other undesirable effects. |
Steve Funk
Junior Member
Username: Tundra45
Post Number: 68
Registered: 06-2004
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2005 - 10:31 pm: |
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Don't use hydrogen peroxide to oxygenate wort. I use a 50% concentrated form of it for work in environmental remediation projects. Search Fenton's chemistry to dig into the mechanisms but, basically, H2O2 breaks down in the presence of certain catalysts such as iron forming hydroxyl radicals. These hyper-active species attack cabon-carbon bonds indiscriminately. All organic matter is suseptable to oxidation by hydroxyl radicals. Although some oxygenation may result, it would not be worth the risk (to me) of the off flavors that could result. A few short blasts of O2 from a gas cylinder through a sintered stone into cooled wort and you're good to go.
Steve
Stevenson, WA |
Hophead
Senior Member
Username: Hophead
Post Number: 1311
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Monday, March 28, 2005 - 10:39 pm: |
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OK, so.......NO.
I've always liked the dry ice for carbonating thread... |
George Schmidt
Intermediate Member
Username: Gschmidt
Post Number: 457
Registered: 08-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - 02:46 am: |
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Man...killjoys ;)
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors -- and miss. ~~Robert A. Heinlein: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
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Belly Buster Bob
Senior Member
Username: Canman
Post Number: 2259
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 12:46 am: |
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pick up jar...shake
Bellybuster Bob
www.bellybuster.netfirms.com
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Brews and Views Archive 2005 
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