Nitro and HE infusion

[Owly055]

I've been playing with non alcoholics lately as I no longer drink more than 2 beers a week. This is a permanent change for me for health reasons, and thus far as been surprisingly easy. Like anybody who brews and drinks a lot, I always was worried about the ever present specter of alcoholism........ anybody who's not concerned probably shouldn't be brewing!
My most recent keggings are pina kombucha....which is absolutely lovely, and a creamy nitro charged mocha. The mocha is excellent, but lacks the stout effect. I just get a lot of head due to the fairly high pressure I'm using.
Reading about nitro coffee and stout, I find that I will need to invest another $50 or more in a special faucet. I also found a Utube on cold coffee served with helium...... complete with chipmunk voices, a well known helium phenomenon. The most interesting thing about helium infusion is that brings the aroma to the surface constantly, and modern pale ales are really all about aroma, and coffee even more so.

Imagine the local microbrewery having a helium tap with a lovely fresh hop pale ale on helium. Not excessively bitter, but intensely flavorful and aromatic......... WOW

What interests me is the possibility of actually infusing the gas in the serving line. Imagine having a setup where the gas from the keg entered the beer stream through an air-stone right in the serving line.......... Perhaps a stainless steel gas infusion canister, followed by a stout faucet. A setup like this might allow you to use a separate tank, and carbonate a brew in the keg, but infuse nitro or helium as it came out of the keg..... for effect or aroma.

It then occurred to me that the atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen.......... why not just infuse with air?? ............ That means not buying gas. You can't charge your keg with air because it will oxygenate your beer.......but in the tap it's a whole 'nother story.

So like usual, I thought to myself, "this ideas is a real winner......... somebody else must've thunk it up before me".......... Google to the rescue, and of course somebody had not only thunk it up, but marketed it. It's called the Nitrobrew, and consists of a stainless steel single serving size vessel, and a charging station. You fill it from your tap, pressure it, and shake well. The vessel has a valve to dispense into a glass. The key here is shake well before dispensing.

https://nitrobrew.com/how-nitrobrew-works/

It's not quite what I had in mind. I think my small cannister with an airstone followed by a stout faucet would work better. The infusion should be fairly close to the tap to avoid build up of stale beer if using atmosphere, which is probably why they use a single serving cannister.

$375 including shipping for a home system including a cheap diaphragm compressor is a bit rich for my blood! But thanks to their video I'm now shaking my mini keg vigorously before dispensing rich nitro mocha. My mocha consists of a gallon of cold brew, a pint of heavy cream, and about 1.5 lbs of chocolate syrup like you would use on ice cream (half a large bottle).

I have an inline aerator for brewing on the way from Amazon as I write. $23.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BWMR5UM/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

H.W.

 

[LarMoeCur]

Helium beer was an April fool’s joke. Run a google search and you will find Helium beers are darn near impossible to make. He is one of the least soluble gases. He is 700 times less soluble than CO2. The second you opened the tap the He is gone.

N is 50 times less soluble. You will be wasting your time and gas running an infusion stone after the keg. The Ns main propose is to drive the beer through a sparkler head in the stout tap to knock both CO2 and N out of solution. That’s way most nitro setups run at 20-30 psi. That creamy rolling head of foam is both CO2 and N leaving the solution rapidly. The smooth creamy experience is from some N and a lot less CO2 making smaller bubbles and with less CO2 comes less carbonic acid bite.

On the mechanical side of things, how would get the coffee to flow past the stone? Once you applied pressure to the stone the coffee would be forced back into the keg. Unless you forced the coffee past the stone with a higher PSI rate from the keg end. But then the N would not be absorbed just blown out the tap as gas. Gas solubility does not happen instantaneously. It takes time, pressure, and cold temperatures or as in Nitrobrew mechanical action (shaking).

 

[day_trippr]

Thought the OP quit drinking...

 

[Owly055]

Thought the OP quit drinking...

I quit brewing, and mostly quit drinking....one beer twice a week..... I sold most of my equipment, and all of my supplies. That does not however mean that I am no longer interested in brewing. I've been brewing since age 12 (50 years ago). The technology of brewing translates into other things as well...... In this case I'm playing with nitro-mocha. One doesn't have to switch off an interest just because one doesn't brew anymore.............

H.W.

 

[day_trippr]

Whatever. Drama seems to be your thing.
Carry on...

 

[kevinthestout]

Cellarstream is probably what you're looking for. Too expensive for home use, but it's the commercial solution for inline nitro.

You don't need to disolve the gas in the beer though. Just use the carb stone in the glass.