Bottled/frozen CO2 to fill headspace?

cataclysmcow · 04-07-2009, 02:12 AM

I'm constantly surrounded by bottled and frozen CO2 from being a welder and preserving food. Dry ice has that 'freezer burn' smell to it and bottled CO2 has a lube oil smell to it, but my tongue/nose is starting to learn what oxygen does to my beer. Has anyone used bottled/frozen CO2 to fill the head space in fermenters/bottles? It's not that big of an issue, but for less than $0.01 I could feel better about brewing smaller batches, sampling way to often and giving my beer the chance to be better. I'm not about to waste a penny to ruin a batch though. Has anyone tried this?

**Reno_eNVy** · 04-07-2009, 02:27 AM

During active fermentation enough CO2 is created to fill the headspace and keep your bucket/carboy/conical infection free. You want to eliminate headspace in the secondary; you want minimal headspace when filling bottles or you first rack to a keg. But in those situations the CO2 from natural carbonation (if that's what you're doing) will do just fine.

SeamusMac · 04-07-2009, 03:34 AM

I haven't thought too much about filling the head space in any of my fermenters but when I bottle my beer I loosely place the cap on the top of each beer bottle then crimp them in the same order I filled them. I saw a guy doing this on youtube a while back and the reasoning behind it was that C02 will come out of the solution as you bottle it. The C02 will push the air out of the head space in each bottle during the time it takes to fill the rest of the bottles and get back to the first one for crimping. I don't know if it makes a difference but that's how I do it.

CnnmnSchnpps · 04-07-2009, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeamusMac

I haven't thought too much about filling the head space in any of my fermenters but when I bottle my beer I loosely place the cap on the top of each beer bottle then crimp them in the same order I filled them. I saw a guy doing this on youtube a while back and the reasoning behind it was that C02 will come out of the solution as you bottle it. The C02 will push the air out of the head space in each bottle during the time it takes to fill the rest of the bottles and get back to the first one for crimping. I don't know if it makes a difference but that's how I do it.

I do it exactly the same way.

I was bottling in Belgian bottles a couple of weeks ago, and as I filled the bottles I temporarily put a bottle cap upside down on top of the bottle. As I continued filling the batch I could hear the caps dancing up and down on the bottle as CO2 was escaping. It works

However at the rate it was going, it might have taken quite a while to actually fill the entire head space in the bottle. From now on I might leave the bottles sitting with the caps on for an hour or so then cap em

fratermus · 04-07-2009, 05:09 PM

I've used dry ice to purge headspace when racking.