Oxygen Tank, Regulator, Refills

[Luckbad]

I'm thinking about upgrading from the old aquarium pump I use for aeration to pure oxygen.

Anyone have any recommendations about what to get? Amazon has an interesting possibility.

If I do go that route, is there a good place to refill the oxygen tank anywhere in the Laguna Hills area (and if not, somewhere close)?

[lexuschris]

Not sure about refilling spots, but I wonder if welding shops use O2 and might refill tanks?

Also, you could opt for a disposable version like:
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/WILLIAMS ... 9C106.aspx

You could also buy the O2 regulator seperately and build your wand with aeration stone, etc.

The little red O2 bottles are available at Home Depot for like $8 and last 8-10 batches.
--LexusChris

[bwarbiany]

Yeah, I have the Williams Brewing setup... It's convenient, easy to store, and much cheaper than the Amazon equivalent.

Sure, O2 is more expensive in the little Home Depot canisters, and it's not a "precision" solution (like that matters if you don't have a DO meter anyway), but it would be a few more years of brewing to recover the higher initial cost of the Amazon version in O2 costs...

[DrDually]

Medical grade O2 requires a doctors prescription for refills
Here is another solution
5 or 10 cu ft cylinder from welding supply with this valve from Cramer-Decker
http://www.cramerdeckermedical.com/prod ... uct_id=583
The difference between medical and industrial O2 is filtration
Suggest you insert an clean filter inline and only this filter for O2
Oxygen makes things burn so avoid ALL contact with oil of any kind
Store lines,filter etc in sealed plastic container to avoid contamination
This cylinder will give you many batches of beer...many more than the small cylinders from box stores

[Luckbad]

So I went the cheap route here and got the regulator for disposable tanks.

Meh.

I really don't like guessing whether I'm giving it enough oxygen or not. Seems prone to over-or-under-oxygenation.

At some point in a year or so I'll upgrade to a full tank/regulator so I know that I'm doing it correctly.

[lexuschris]

As I understand it, unless you are directly measuring the dissolved O2 content in the wort, everything else is a bit of guesswork anyways. The good news is that too much is not really an issue, and an extra few seconds on the wand is cheap. I just count to 30 and make sure to hit a few layers of depth in the fermenter, then pitch my yeast and watch them go crazy!

I should probably add an inline filter to the O2 line, but have not really needed it thus far.
--LexusChris