Injecting CO2 in bottles?

[r4dyce]

I recall when touring a brewery (Harpoon) they said as the beer was coming down the bottling line it's still flat and the last thing they do is inject it with CO2 before capping.
Is it possible for people to do this on a homebrewing scale with some setup with CO2 tanks?
I'm guessing it's not very practical because Ive never read about it anywhere, but figured I'd ask out of curiosity.

Thanks

 

[Dcpcooks]

I'm pretty sure thats not accurate. Perhaps they were talking about injecting a touch of co2 to the bottle after it was filled to displace o2 before capping. This will increase shelf life and stability as o2 in the beer will cause oxidation.
O2 after fermentation is very bad for beer. Some argue that hot side aeration is a problem as well.

All breweries will use a uni tank or bright tank to carbonate beer before packaging unless they are bottle conditioned or capped lagers that are carbed in the lager stage naturally. It would be impractical and difficult to predict co2 levels to force carb on the fly while bottling.

Closest thing for homebrew would be a Blichmann quick carb. [emoji482]

 

[GPP33]

I think dcpcooks is probably correct, remember most tour guides don't actually know much about brewing. However, I could see how a system set up to inject liquid CO2 could be very precise and allow you to add the carbonation at bottling. You'd need to move quick though since it's going to want to become a gas and escape as soon as it gets to a lower pressure.

For a home brew version you could drop some dry ice in your bottle.......just start with plastic bottles until you figure out how much to add.

 

[Dcpcooks]

I think dcpcooks is probably correct, remember most tour guides don't actually know much about brewing. However, I could see how a system set up to inject liquid CO2 could be very precise and allow you to add the carbonation at bottling. You'd need to move quick though since it's going to want to become a gas and escape as soon as it gets to a lower pressure.



For a home brew version you could drop some dry ice in your bottle.......just start with plastic bottles until you figure out how much to add.

They guy that owns my lhbs has carbonated soda in a keg with dry ice before. He had a stand at the farmers market last year. It's a crazy process, stuff was erupting everywhere tripping the blow off on the keg and sending streams of soda into the air... very funny stuff. It only produced a marginal level of carbonation.

 

[jerbrew]

[ame]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSax1boZR8[/ame]

Pretty neat trick. I've seen a few of these. Some using a carbonation cap pre made. Like one of these.

https://www.williamsbrewing.com/28M...P-P3582.aspx?gclid=CJbosY-2iNICFU2SfgodZ78EfA

You'd have to use plastic bottles but if you're looking to taste a carbed product before packaging to see if you need any additions it might be handy.

 

[r4dyce]

Cool thanks for the replies. Yea there's a definite possibility I'm mis-remembering or misunderstanding what the guy was saying at the time. I'll have to ask if I get back there.

Dry ice and beer experiments sound like a lot of fun but I'd Probably just end up with flat beer and bad frost bite.

 

[microbusbrewery]

...remember most tour guides don't actually know much about brewing.

Kind of off topic, but I experienced this recently. I've probably been on a dozen tours and usually they're pretty good but the last one started off by letting everyone know it was the second tour he'd ever given. He did a pretty good job explaining what each vessels was used for, mash tun, lauter tun, boil kettle, whirlpool. But he indicated almost all the hops were added in the lauter tun. I suppose you could do this for some beers, but these guys had a few IPAs on tap that obviously had lots of late additions and most likely some whirlpool additions.

+1, the guy probably meant they purge with CO2 to minimize O2 pickup rather than carbing on the fly.