PeeBee wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:20 pmThanks for that link. I couldn't get a straight "yah or nay" to my question with it but it eventually says:orlando wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 1:17 pm... For liquid it depends on who you ask. There are claims that "wet" yeast only need oxygen for building their cell walls ready for dormancy. They don't actually need it for respiration in the lag phase.This is what I'm suggesting, but unfortunately it stresses that it is only what the author personally thinks ("I do not believe..." etc.) and not what might be reality. But also says "Many brewers have successfully made decent beer without aerating their worts" so it looks like "suck it and see" will be a low-risk way forward.I do not believe that brewers necessarily need to aerate their worts at all if the pitching yeast comes from a fresh starter culture that itself has been well-aerated during growth and stepped up to produce a sufficient number of healthy cells, or if a large culture is repitched from a very recent (aerated) batch. Wort aeration is clearly beneficial, however, if you are unable to obtain the optimal pitching rate (about 1 million active cells per mL per degree Plato, or about 5 to 10 million active cells per mL for typical worts) — and many brewers cannot.
Bearing what the author has to say in "The Aeration 'Default'".
What answers my question best is when the author says:Aerating your wort may solve some fermentation problems, but remember that if you’re pitching a fresh, healthy yeast culture of the optimal size, aeration is usually not essential and may even be undesirable in certain cases. Most important, the level of dissolved oxygen necessary in wort to produce the best beer depends on the strain of yeast being used, its viability, the pitching rate, and the style of beer being made.
My takeaway is, always aerate, can't do much harm. Mainly because I am rarely in the ideal pitching position. I am an inveterate repitcher and aeration helps in that.