carbonating with dry ice?

has anyone ever tried to carbonate there cider with dry ice? i know if you drop dry ice in water it makes it slightly carbonated so im wondering if anyone's tried tried this with cider.

im thinking about putting an air stone in my cider and pumping CO2 through it from a second bottle of dry ice as an experiment but want to see if anyone else has tried it or thought of it.

there is a lot of crap in dry ice. I would use a mixture of water and acid blend and then add baking soda to create the CO2 and then force the CO2 through the cider with a tube and a stone as you said.

I don't think you'd be able to get enough CO2 into your cider using an airstone to make it appreciably carbonated. As you bubble CO2 through it, it's going to be offgassing at the same time. Just adding a bit of sugar before bottling seems WAY easier than trying to use dry ice to pump CO2 through a stone and then trying to bottle before losing the carbonation.

i wanted to know because i was going to take the yeast out of the picture. im planing on cold crashing my cider in the freezer for a few days and then racking, and after that process i dont think there will be enough yeast alive to do anything.

im planing on adding the CO2 through the air stone in a closed system (under pressure) kinda like that soda stream thing they sell on tv used to make homemade soda. im thinking a regulated 10-15psi. i dont think an acid base reaction to make the CO2 is a good idea for this situation since it is exothermic and could release some dissolved gasses into the cider.

but i think your rite chshercat, now that i think about it it would be a lot of work, so maybe i should re think it.

being exothermic has nothing to do with it. build a reaction chamber with a tube coming off of it and use said tube to prime the cider just like you were talking about. That would allow you to separate any heat from the process, not that heat would effect it much especially if the cider was ice cold, which would be better anyway for CO2 absorption. This same discussion came up about a week ago check out this thread and the link in it giving directions on how to build a carbonator. In the link they recommend vinegar and baking soda but I am of the mind that vinegar should never be used anywhere near wine or cider.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/carbination-293728/

I think a CO2 system, a corny keg and a homemade bottling wand would be the way to go if you're going to filter the yeast out.

thanks daze for the link, glad to see someone else was thinking about trying it to.


i agree with you that vinegar is the last thing you should be using for your acid, but at the same time its probably one of the best. the reason why i dont think acid base reactions are the a good idea (with out proper filters) in general is because almost all acids are gases dissolved in water (one acceptation being acidic acid (vinegar)). that's why i was concerned about it being exothermic. as the CO2 is produced the solution gets hotter, as the solution gets hotter more of the dissolved gases that make up the acid are released and then redissolve when bubbling through your cider. even if it wasn't exothermic some acid molecules would still come out of solution, turn into gas, and go into the cider do to the natural equilibrium between the dissolved gas and undissolved gas.

the reason why i think acidic acid/vinegar would be one of the best choices is because it is naturally a liquid, not a gas dissolved in water, so you wouldn't get acid transfer to your cider. but you probably would get a vinegar taste to you cider, which is not good.

i think if i choose to try carbonate my cider using this method ill probably get my CO2 from a bottle filled with water, sugar, and yeast and pipe it over to the cider. then i dont have to worry about a vinegar taste or acid transfer. ill write a post to let you know how it turned out if i try it.

Also, my guess is that there's a surprising amount of gas in small amounts of dry ice, so it would be hard to accurately measure the right amount of dry ice so that your bottles don't explode. Remember, solids are a bunch of molecules packed very tightly. Gas, even at fairly high pressures, are molecules spaced very far apart, so a small amount of a solid goes a long way in a gas. Someone who definitely isn't Basilisk may have made dry ice bombs with plastic 2L soda bottles when he was younger, and let him tell you, you do not want to be on the wrong side of dry ice.

Why don't you just bottle ferment like beer ? I do and it's great! & dry!

Basilisk said:

Also, my guess is that there's a surprising amount of gas in small amounts of dry ice, so it would be hard to accurately measure the right amount of dry ice so that your bottles don't explode.

Click to expand...

your rite, there is allot of gas that is given off. 1 lb of dry ice is equal to 10.31 moles of CO2 which is equal to around 231 liters of gas @ 1atm. so yes it is allot, but its also very easy to calculate the amount of dry ice to use. but those calculations aren't really needed since i was planing on using a regulator to keep a constant psi of 10-15, so any extra would just be vented off.

as to the reason why i want to try this instead of the normal way, its because it removes variables and will allow me to control the final product better. if i wanted a dry cider it wouldn't really matter. but i want a semi sweet cider that is not back sweetened. i plan on killing off the yeast when i get my desired gravity reading so fermentation stops, so if i want it carbonated i need to use different methods.