Ask The Brewmasters

We are currently looking to replace our oxygen flow meter for our wort oxygenation. We have been using a Harris 0-15LPM meter for a few years and usually run at around 0.5LPM so I am looking for something with a lower range and finer resolution. The Blichmann Oxygen Flow Regulator

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Oxygen Flow Regulator Oxygen is vital to yeast health and the final flavor profile of your beer, so knowing its flow is important. Other regulators simply regulate pressure, meaning your actual flow may vary. That's why our Oxygen Flow Regulator helps you dial in the EXACT liters per minute of oxygen needed to achieve 8-10 ppm of dissolved oxygen in your wort. View this on Blichmannengineering >

looks like a good range but I am concerned that the adjustment won't be fine enough. We measure wort DO with a Hach meter and often tweak in 0.1LPM increments to hit our target. Any other preferred options out there? I want to stick to something that is a regulator/flow meter combo if possible. 

Cheers!

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Sam Tierney
Propagator Brewery Manager
Firestone Walker Brewing Co
Marina del Rey CA
(805) 835-4459
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Sam,

For lower flow rates, you want a pediatric meter. See my reply in this thread: https://community.mbaa.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=37&MessageKey=8a89c48e-145d-4bc7-a104-50fc9f0859a0&CommunityKey=cb7fc054-5008-4b01-87f3-588d3c711e07&tab=digestviewer

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John Bryce
Charlottesville VA
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Maybe check this company out Series RM Rate-Master® Flowmeters | Dwyer Instruments (dwyer-inst.com)
They may not have a unit with the fine increments you want, but we use their meters for O2 and CO2 to good effect.

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Dave Chichura
Ex Novo Brewing
Corrales, NM
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Brooks Instrument out of Pennsylvania has a wide range of gas mass flow meters and mass flow controllers.  Not sure your budget, but those instruments are commonly used to control gas control into a wide variety of fermentations.

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Ashton Lewis
Manager of Training and Technical Support
BSG Craftbrewing
MBAA District Great Plains, Technical Chair
Springfield, Missouri
(417) 830-2337
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Thanks to everyone for the helpful suggestions! I ended up re-working our oxygen system and going with a regulator on the bottle feeding into a 0-1.5LPM range flow meter mounted near our oxygen injection system up on the brew deck. We went with a cheaper meter from Amazon to prove the concept but will get a higher quality one with a permanent mount down the road. 

Having a higher resolution has already proven to be a nice improvement and we can now reliably adjust at about 0.05LPM increments to hit our targets (we are now running at about 0.1-0.3LPM for a 10BBL batch and a 50-minute cool-in to hit 12-25ppm in FV depending on yeast strain in case anyone is curious.) This system is also a lot more stable than the welding-style combo meter we had been using. We have a relatively complicated system with a secondary pressure adjustment regulator/condensation trap feeding a couple one-way valves into a venturi nozzle, so I'm not sure how differently this would have worked out if we just went straight into a stone. 

Cheers!

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Sam Tierney
Propagator Brewery Manager
Firestone Walker Brewing Co
Marina del Rey CA
(805) 835-4459
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