Recent content by HonestJon

Yesterday evening, My girlfriend and I sucessfully bottled 6 gallons of beautiful, wonderful, dark beer using 2-liter bottles (11 of them) and dry ice. It went off without a hitch. This method works, and works well. Now I'm ready for Memorial Day! Cheers!

7 grams is closer to one pebble than a few (dry ice is pretty dense stuff). Again, this works. I've done it for years and have had only one bottle fail in all that time. I have 6 scrumpdeliicious gallons of a porter I brewed that's going to be bottled using dry ice and 2-liter bottles...

KeyWestBrewing: How much dry ice did you put in them to make them explode? I only put about 7 grams or so for carbonation. I've done this for years, and it works if properly executed. Caution is a must, though.

"It leaves no liquid but it will leave some black flecks of who knows what. " My bet would be that the black flecks are dust, dirt, lint, etc. from where the extreme cold of the dry ice condenses water vapor (and all that's in the air) from the air as it's subliming. I could be wrong.

"Its not the dry ice freezing the plastic that causes it to rupture...." Dry ice is EXCEEDINGLY cold. It DOES make plastic far more brittle than it normally is. (The one that exploded on me was an off-brand {Citrus Drop, IIRC}, and it was one of those new-fangled bottles, too.) That resulting...

Chandlerbang: It's not "retarded" at all. I've used dry ice to carbonate beer for years. You can get medical-grade dry ice, if you're worried about contamination. Using this method was extensively discussed in this thread: >>>...

Go get some dry ice. It's readily available and cheap. Siphon 2 liters of beer into an empty 2-liter pop bottle, filling it almost completely. Weigh out 7 grams of the dry ice. Get your cap ready, drop the dry ice into the bottle, slap the cap on quickly, shake the heck out of the 2-liter bottle...

BBL_Brewer: "Just out of curiosity, are you using food grade dry ice?" I didn't know there was such a thing. I just use the bricks I get a Kroger and a hatchet to chip off little pieces before weighing. I figured that there really isn't much that's going to survive on the stuff in the first...

Juan Moore: "FWIW I think trying this in a keg is a very bad idea. The pressure will build up much faster than you'll be able to force it into solution (much faster and easier to close a 2L and then vigorously shake it than it is a corny keg). Most corny kegs are rated up to 160psi, and the...

I bet it would work just fine, Magnanamous. I'd hate for somebody to try it and ruin their kegging setup, though. It'd be hard to properly shake one of those things full of beer, too. Don't those corny kegs have a pressure release?

You can use pretty much any size bottle that you want to, progmac. You'll have to do the math to figure out the proper amount of dry ice to use. The smaller the bottle, the more accurate your scale has to be to get it right. I'll see if I can find where I figured out the math and post it for...

I'm sure, purplejeepxj, that you COULD toss some dry ice in a keg to get it carbonated. But, you have to be able to REALLY shake the heck out of whatever you drop the dry ice in. And I mean VIGOROUSLY, or else the pressure goes up too high. It'd be a tough row to hoe, unless you're Lou Ferrigno...

Looks like you need all the bells and whistles (keg, CO2 tank, regulator, etc.) to use a carbonator cap. What I've come up with is a way to carbonate your brew without having to have all that expensive stuff.

Thanks, nutty_gnome! And yeah, I DO kindasorta look like the guy in the pic---except for the bandage on my left hand.

I'm not familiar with a "carbonator cap." Sounds like something you hook a CO2 cartidge up to. The bottle bursting and the resultant injury was entirely my fault. I've used this method a number of times, with no bad outcomes, until now. It's a handy method, if you don't want to wait for...