CO2 sources

I have a batch of fruit mead that has pretty much stopped fermenting (not forming bubbles in the air lock and has been on the yeast about 3 1/2 weeks. The volume is going to be right around two gallons and I would like to put it in my 3 gallon carboy (can't find a two gallon) so I suppose that if I do I need to fill it with CO2. I am not equipped for kegging and thus have no CO2 tank. Are there other sources that I can get in the local stores? I'm pretty sure the aerosol sprays for blowing out dust from a computer keyboard is CO2. Could this be used?

Yikes, those computer sprays sometimes contain lots of weird stuff. Indicated on the label sometimes. Mine is flammable, so certainly not CO2 or nitrogen.

You will have loads of CO2 in solution, and the mere act of racking will cause it to degas enough to start your bubbler up for a few minutes - probably enough to fully fill the airspace of the new container with CO2.

This is all I've done, not bad results so far.

There are products like private-reserve you can find in wine stores, would probably be the safest & surest bet. http://www.privatepreserve.com

CO2 cartridges/canisters for paintball and dry ice are 2 readily available sources, but not the cleanest. The paintball CO2 is not food grade and most likely will have metals/rust. And dry ice usually has some debris inside from my personal experience, also keep temp shock in mind. If I were to go this route, I would rig some sort of rube goldberg filtration system
You could also make up 1/2-1 gallon of a simple sugar, water, ec118 or whatever yeast you have, aka a greenhouse CO2 generator. and use a blow off tube into the receiving carboy, since CO2 is heavier it should displace the air inside the carboy pushing it out the top.

I don't know about the quality of the co2 but I use little bottles to fill a flat tire on my road bike, maybe you could look into those. http://www.competitivecyclist.com/product-accessories/2012-innovations-co2-refill-16g-7852.47.1.html

Ahs sells a $20 handheld charger that uses $2 cartridges. Worked well for sealing my kegs before I got my whole setup going and it's food grade.

DrVertebrae said:

I'm pretty sure the aerosol sprays for blowing out dust from a computer keyboard is CO2. Could this be used?

Click to expand...

Under no circumstances use any kind of 'computer' canned air. Due to the whole huffing phenomenon all canned air manufactures have started adding a bitterent to their product.

If you want your mead carbonated you'll likely have to bottle condition with additional fermentable sugars (and hope the yeast hasn't fully pooped out) or keg and force carb. I can't imagine being able to get an adequant CO2 solution into the liquid even using paintball CO2 canisters without a pressure tight container like a keg.

Edit: I misread the OP's intentions. If you're just trying to get a CO2 blanket, to protect the mead when transferring to a 3g carboy and it's still in the initial fermenting vessel, the simply act of racking it to secondary should degas the mead enough to provide a CO2 blanket.

I was thinking about doing this at one point (but I wound up topping up with a fresh mixed bit of additional must). My plan was to get some dry ice and a plastic jar and rig up a hose to transfer the CO2 out. Drop some dry ice in, put the lid on, heat and let it "pour" into the top of the carboy. I think this would be preferable to adding non-food grade dry ice to the must since you really don't want industrial crap getting into your beverage.

I must be missing something. Why not rack into two (1) gallon jugs? That's what I do.