I bought an aeration kit from homebrewstuff.com. I took some photos of it:
The first photo is everything that I received today. The second one is a close-up of the filter and the last one is a photo of the aeration stone.
It will be interesting to see if the kit will enable me to make better beer. I am not sure how much effect my carboy shaking or splashing has had on the final product. An aeration kit seems to be an essential tool for home brewing. We’ll see if there is a noticeable difference with the next brew.
That reminds me…I need to order the California Common ingredients.
JW
Being able to add components to your process is a great thing. The setup you bought is very similar to the one I have. The only downside I have with it is that I believe most experts suggest running the pump for 25-30 minutes so the ambient air can saturate the wort. That’s could be an extra half hour added to the brew session (although I’m usually cleaning kettles while its aerating, so it might not be a serial addition of time). I’ve been really tempted to get an small O2 tank and oxygenate that way. With those setups, because of the O2 concentration, you only have to hit it for 60 seconds and your done – quite a drastic time difference, IMHO.
Let us know if you see any noticable difference once you start using it. You might see your lag time decrease after pitching, but I’m not sure how else to quantify the improvement of aeration.
All the best,
-JW