When transferring from the mash tun to the brew pot, I had set the mash tun about 3 feet above the brew pot and let the wort flow out and fall to the pot. This caused a large amount of bubbles that stayed around until the wort started to boil. It does not seem like it would effect the beer in any way, but the more I thought about it the more I wondered. Does aerating the wort from transferring …

I was thinking of putting a hop back in line with my whirlpool chilling process. (Pumping hot wort out of the kettle through a hop back and back into the kettle with an immersion chiller running in the kettle). Should I be concerned with that first blast of hot wort going into the hop back and getting oxidized by the air trapped in the hops? Maybe it would be best to chill some first, then go through the hop back. …

I recently bought a Blichmann Therminator counterflow chiller (I know, extravagant, but it is the awesome). The instructions say to operate it with the hot wort input facing down, so that gravity causes the wort chamber to fill correctly. They say that if you get a bubble in the wort, it will oxidize your beer. Really? One bubble? I don't worry much at all about hot-side aeration when moving hot wort around. Why should I worry about a bubble?

Hot-side aeration (HSA) is the introduction of oxygen to wort during "hot side" operations such as mashing, lautering, boiling and whirlpool. Prior evidence indicated that hot-side aeration harms the shelf-life of beer by increasing the concentration of oxidized fatty acids. However, there is an emerging body of evidence contradicting these claims. What is the prevailing evidence regarding HSA?