Dry Ice carbonating?

So, I had a thought about bottling and carbonating, more just a theory, but it made me scratch my chin a while....

Since dry ice sublimes directly into gaseous CO2. And, if a gas builds pressure in a closed container with a liquid, the gas will be dispersed evenly in the container, and consequently, infused into the liquid.....

Is it possible to carbonate bottles with a chunk of dry ice?

Possible benefits of this would be shorter time from bottling to consumption, as you wouldn't need to wait for the yeast to consume the priming sugar and produce CO2.

Any thoughts?

Bad idea unless you like picking glass shards from your skin.

Bad idea, but an interesting one.
If a guy were to try it, I think a keg would be safer.

I bet it wouldn't take much dry ice in a five gallon keg.

People think about it until they see the youtube videos of folks making handgrenades with dry ice in beer or even soda bottles.

We have a few threads on it. Like this one.

Or even this one.

There's a reason why the two most used ways of carbing beer are priming, and force carbing in kegs.....If dry ice were safe or practical, then people would be doing it, instead of making yotube videos of explosions.

Yeah. Bad idea.

Sometimes bad ideas are the most fun!

I was thinking about this too and here is what I came up with: The molar volume of CO2 at STP is 23890.7 cm^3/mol the molar mass is 44.0095 g/mol. A 22 oz. bottle is 650.6 mL, so in theory to get approx 2 volumes of CO2 we need 2*650.6 or 1301.2 mL of CO2 in the bottle. The mole fraction is then 0.05426, multiply that by the molar mass and we get about 2.39 grams of CO2. So theoretically we could add 2.39 grams of solid CO2, cap the bottle and end up with approximately 2 volumes of CO2 at STP once it fully sublimates. More calculation would have to be done to get 2 volumes at serving temperature but I wanted to put this out there and have someone double check my work before going to that extent (I'm lazy). This also falls in line with the alternate definition of volumes of CO2 which is 2 grams per liter per volume, using that definition we would need 2.60 grams, the difference is probably due to oversimplification of the problem but seems like a reasonable amount of error.

If a few people check my work and agree that it's a reasonable assumption I might try it with a couple of bottles. I could put them in a bucket in my keezer in case they do grenade. Let me know what you think, thanks.

As a side note I cold crash all of my beer before bottling so the liquid would be cold when the dry ice was added. If there is any support for this I will use soda bottles and start with one gram and progress up to the calculated value if nothing goes awry. It may be more effort than its worth in the end but it would be an interesting experiment either way.

I'm all for doing something that's a little crazy or things that will fail simply for the fun of that can be had when it fails, but this may be a bit dangerous.
To start with, if you are going to try this I would use water so that you don't wast beer. You would also be able to taste for off flavors ( if it works ).

Have you accounted for the amount of loss when the dry ice hit's liquid? Wouldn't there be a fog of CO2 that comes out right away?
I haven't messed with dry ice so I'm just going to ask a dumb question. Is the reaction different if the liquid is warmer? As in if you calculated it correctly, would you need to have everything the same temperature each time and get the cap on in the same about of time?

Seems like there could be variables that could lead to problems. Low carbonation problems if a guy was lucky.

If this were a viable option and it worked well, I would think breweries would be doing it.
Carbonation drops would be an easy way to get the right carbonation without risking bottle bombs. You typically want the beer to age a bit after it hits the bottle anyway.

45_70sharps said:

I'm all for doing something that's a little crazy or things that will fail simply for the fun of that can be had when it fails, but this may be a bit dangerous.
To start with, if you are going to try this I would use water so that you don't wast beer. You would also be able to taste for off flavors ( if it works ).

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Good point I'm glad someone is thinking about the safety of the beer.

Have you accounted for the amount of loss when the dry ice hit's liquid?
I haven't messed with dry ice so I'm just going to ask a dumb question. Is the reaction different if the liquid is warmer? As in if you calculated it correctly, would you need to have everything the same temperature each time and get the cap on in the same about of time?

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Yes the reaction is more violent when the temperature difference is greater. You would need the liquid around the same temp and the capping time around the same which I have not accounted for, again that post is kind of a feeler and this is good feedback. If I were to try it I would shave the dry ice into the smallest shards possible in the hope that it would freeze the top layer of liquid and sit on top of the ice, instead if dropping to the bottom and reacting violently. Then I would cap it as quickly as possible because trying to calculate for the amount of gas evolved between the drop in and capping time would be difficult. Capping time variability would make it very imprecise, so I would not increase the amount of dry ice I would just accept the loss of carbonation. Maybe shoot for 2.5 volumes but that is as risky as I'd go.

Seems like there could be variables that could lead to problems. Low carbonation problems if a guy was lucky.

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Very true which is why I would start with soda bottles like in the video that Revvy linked to. When those explode they tend to remain in one piece and don't cause much damage to personnel.

If this were a viable option and it worked well, I would think breweries would be doing it.
Carbonation drops would be an easy way to get the right carbonation without risking bottle bombs. You typically want the beer to age a bit after it hits the bottle anyway.

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IMO if this were a viable option breweries still wouldn't do it because it can lead to variability, and would be more difficult to automate. The machines they use to force carbonate bottles are completely hands off and provide good consistency. If it works but is inconsistent then it will just be a cool proof of concept and I will return to the sugar method.

RTL said:

If I were to try it I would shave the dry ice into the smallest shards possible in the hope that it would freeze the top layer of liquid and sit on top of the ice, instead if dropping to the bottom and reacting violently.

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An issue that I see with the shards is the exponentially higher surface area that' exposed to the liquid.
It seems that a piece the diameter of the opening of the bottle would the the best bet.
More surface area equals more reaction area.

RTL said:

So theoretically we could add 2.39 grams of solid CO2, cap the bottle and end up with approximately 2 volumes of CO2 at STP once it fully sublimates.

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Would the type of beer also need to be accounted for in figuring what the STP would be and then maybe the amount of dry ice?

I'd be concerned that if you brewed with an ale yeast it would have a different reaction than when you did the control experiment with water (specially with the taste!). Considering that when you do the sugar method, you still have the little yeast guys going about their business and with the dry ice you may be flash freezing them at the top. Maybe better success if done with a lager brew since their preferred location and lower temperature?

Also! How would a non-chemist measure the pressure in a commercially produced beer?! I'm still pretty new to this, and I'm working with crazily rudimentary equipment. 0.o

Yeast would be a non factor.
They have turned the wort into beer and ate all they are going to eat in the liquid if you don't add bottling sugars.

Style of beer would only matter in your target carbonation level.
The base theory and principal would be the same. You would just have to adjust the CO2 level.

I still say this is a disaster waiting to happen. Make sure and video tape it and post it on youtube if things go wrong!

45_70sharps said:

An issue that I see with the shards is the exponentially higher surface area that' exposed to the liquid.
It seems that a piece the diameter of the opening of the bottle would the the best bet.
More surface area equals more reaction area.

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Thats a valid point, I think the only way the shavings would work is if they were guaranteed to sit on a layer of ice and not drop into the liquid. According to the northern brewer tutorial on bottle conditioning the PET bottles can hold 10 volumes of CO2, so maybe I'll pick a couple of those up from the LHBS and start with that. This of course is bound to find its way to YouTube.

AurenLamben said:

Also! How would a non-chemist measure the pressure in a commercially produced beer?! I'm still pretty new to this, and I'm working with crazily rudimentary equipment.

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The only way to do that at home would be to build something that could puncture the lid that was attached to a pressure gauge. That too could get dangerous though. Your best bet would be to invert some form of measuring container (like a large beaker) in water making sure there are no air bubbles in the container. Then open a beer inside the container under water and measure the volume of CO2 that is evolved from the wasted beer. From the volume of CO2 and the volume of liquid you could get an idea of the pressures in the bottle. Although an internet search might be faster and easier.

Clearly, it'd have to be calculated, as RTL already did...Thanks for that RTL! The potential to create a grenade is overwhelmingly prevalent if too much ice were added. I think most of those Youtube videos are from people adding way too much dry ice for the container size and ending up with catastrophic results. From what i've seen on here already, it seems possible if you could get your calculations exact.

On the topic of CO2 loss prior to capping, I'd venture to say that the amount lost would be negligible, and any amount lost would decrease the risk of explosion by that much more.

Also, it's equally as possible to create a grenade scenario with too much priming sugar. Same concept, just very different proportions.