Dry Ice to Carbonate Beer?

[juse]

I've been reading about long-term food storage, particularly grains, & one of the techniques that caught my eye was using a piece of dry ice in a 5 gallon bucket, then filling the bucket up 3/4 of the way with dried grain, and then placing a silica gel packet on top. The dry ice melts, turning into CO2 gas, displacing the oxygen, then you seal up the bucket. Stays good for years.

Anyway, I got to thinking, couldn't I use dry ice to carbonate my beer somehow? Has anyone done this or heard of it? Seems like I could put small chunk of it in my bottles right before bottling & it would be ready rather quickly. I guess the cold might crack the bottle, don't know. I know it would kill the yeast.

Is this totally insane, or a good idea?

 

[FlyGuy]

See here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=29448

 

[Desert Monkey]

Kinda crazy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_ice_bomb

Might be one heck of a bottle bomb -

 

[juse]

Thanks, FlyGuy/Desert Monkey. I did a search for 'dry ice' before I posted, but it turned up no results. I'll check it out.


Edit:
Okay, I checked it out. Yikes! Nevermind..... sugar works just fine for me.

 

[jay075j]

I've heard of people using it to carbonate soda, but I'm not sure if you would want to try it with beer. Sounds like it would be way too hard to try to calculate it out for a good carbonation level. If you were to try it at all, you may want to consider it with a soda keg. Bottles will blow like Monica L.

 

[Karac]

Kinda missed the boat here but...

Basically if you take one gram of dry ice, it expands to about .83L almost one volume of CO2. I didnt do the math, here is the website:

http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/gases/faq/co2-volume-from-dry-ice.shtml

 

[krops13]

What about kegging instead of bottles. You would be able to release pressure if overpressure happens.

 

[malkore]

What about kegging instead of bottles. You would be able to release pressure if overpressure happens.

but why? using dry ice to carbonate falls under the "yeah, you could do it, but what do you gain" category. if its an experiment you want to prove, go for it (but you won't be the first).

for practical purposes, its not economical and since you have to pretty precisely measure each piece of dry ice to achieve the right carbonation level while not giving yourself frostbite and also not letting the ice sublimate before you get it capped/sealed.

 

[JKoravos]

but why? using dry ice to carbonate falls under the "yeah, you could do it, but what do you gain" category. if its an experiment you want to prove, go for it (but you won't be the first).

for practical purposes, its not economical and since you have to pretty precisely measure each piece of dry ice to achieve the right carbonation level while not giving yourself frostbite and also not letting the ice sublimate before you get it capped/sealed.

+1


What's the point?

 

[pattatat]

I would advise against this.

We might have used to play with dry ice and 20oz plastic bottles back in the day..
My friend might have broken 3 bones in his hand from one going off prematurely....

 

[eelpout]

What about kegging instead of bottles. You would be able to release pressure if overpressure happens.

yea thats what we thought when we used Dry ice in our Coleman cooler years and years ago.

we figured the pressure would leak out of the gasket and be done. this was at 8 in the morning. At about 9 the cooler and the most of the truck cap decided to depart from the pick up at an alarming rate of speed.
Quite spectacular actually.

When we were kids we could get dry ice all over and I can tell you that the amount needed to detonate a peanut butter jar is minimal. but that was before everything was plastic.

 

[ZeroTucker]

The site that is all about dry ice was talking about using dry ice to cool a refrigerator (like when your power is out). It says that all your drinks will be carbonated afterwords... milk, water, anything open.

 

[SKBrewer]

How about using dry ice when botteling to purge the bottles and cap on foam? A VERY small piece in the bottle, then fill, wait for bubbling to die down and cap. Provided you were careful that all the solid was gone before capping no reason why it should be dangerous?

 

[audger]

How about using dry ice when botteling to purge the bottles and cap on foam? A VERY small piece in the bottle, then fill, wait for bubbling to die down and cap. Provided you were careful that all the solid was gone before capping no reason why it should be dangerous?

you wouldnt gain any dissolved CO2 from this, and the offgassing would most likely cause most of the bottle to be foam instead of liquid beer. the small amount of CO2 left over from fermentation that leaks from the beer while bottling is enough to purge the half inch of head space. or why not just purge with a tank of CO2 instead?

also thats what oxygen absorbing caps are all about. no need to possibly make a mistake and accidentally make a glass hand grenade.

 

[Nirorlev]

Can dry ice be used to cool down the wart quickly to room temp before adding the yeasts?

 

[audger]

it can, but it probably isnt cost effective at all. anything colder than the wort can be used to cool it.

 

[Ply318ci]

I know that if you pour a glass of liquid, like apple juice, and then added a chuck of dry ice to the glass and wait a few minutes it will carb up the juice. You could try this with a glass of flat beer, like maybe bottle one with out priming sugar and wait a few weeks and pour into a glass then add a few oz of dry ice to the glass and wait till it dissolves. I am going to try something like this soon and report back.

 

[ONOIML8]

I am going to try something like this soon and report back.

I would love to know how this went for you.

I've got many bottles of a tasty beer that didn't carbonate. I guess that's what happens when you've had too many beers and forget the sugar at bottling time. My thought was to do this like we used to do with root beer as kids: pour the beer in a bowl that has some dry ice, wait fifteen minutes and serve. Does that work?

 

[Brentski]

I would think temperature might make the sublimation rate un-predictable, the size of "pellet" would have to be pretty exact and as soon as your beer hits it the shock could blow the bottle.
I kinda want to try it just to find out what happens (in the back-yard, of course). I use priming sugar in my bottles and some recipes seem to produce more trub than others, so I thought of using dry ice too... It's hard to justify the risk to my beer though. Great question.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

This threads over 3 years old...

I did it last month though, worked out pretty well for some fast force carbonating when the pipeline falls apart but I prefer sugar priming when available. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=325481&page=4