What did PEPSI do with this?

[l3asturd]

I recently scored some cornies on craigslist for $20 each. They were all still full of syrup! The guy also had a blue pepsi CO2 tank. Looks to be a 20lb tank. He threw that in. He also wanted to give me a pump of some sort, but I told him I needed to find out what it was first. It was part of the pepsi serving system, but I have no idea what it would have been pumping. Here's a picture:

Anyone?

 

[mux]

That's a sub pump from the titanic.

 

[l3asturd]

haha. Thanks mux!

OK for real....I did a little googling and figured out it's a carbonator.

Now my question is....and I'll probably start googling.....could this be used for beer? Instant carbonated beer, similar to how soda is served? I'm sure there must be something wrong with it, considering if it worked everyone would be doing it.

 

[brewingmeister]

It's a carbonator pump. Carbonates the liquid at the time of serving by taking co2 from the atmosphere. Looks pretty ancient.

 

[krazydave]

Was just going to say that it looks like a carbonator pump, but see that that's already been mentioned. That thing looks like it's been sitting in a salty shipyard for the past 40 years! Might make a good boat anchor!

 

[knotquiteawake]

You can make make yourself a club soda fountain. Add syrups and you've got unlimited soda possibilities.

 

[TopherM]

You can't "insta-carbonate" beer. I can't remember why, but there have been several threads I've read over the years of people wanting to use a soda setup to do exactly that, and the answer is always a resounding NO.

I can't imagine that you could pour anything but a complete foam pour through a soda system.

If I had to guess, I'd say that since beer has many more proteins in the solution than soda, the foamy beer would take much much longer to dissipate than it does in a soda, and less actual carbonation would be leftover.

 

[bobjohnson]

$20 for corny's though is awesome!

 

[bja]

It's a carbonator pump. Carbonates the liquid at the time of serving by taking co2 from the atmosphere. Looks pretty ancient.

Huh?

 

[Rbeckett]

Thats a procon pump. Take it from the guy and sell it to a welder to build his water cooled tig torch set up. Should be able to get at least 50 bucks for it if it runs. Procons sell remanned for a hundred bucks now and are becoming more scarce since available cores are in short supply. Definately worth tinkering with even if you just turn it around and sell it.
WCB

 

[thargrav]

It's a carbonator pump. Carbonates the liquid at the time of serving by taking co2 from the atmosphere. Looks pretty ancient.

Actually it does not take CO2 from the air but it is a carbonator, or at least what's left of one.

You feed it CO2 at 100 PSI and tap water at 40 - 75 PSI.
The fitting in the center with the black cord coming out is a self contained float valve.

You can't use one of these for carbonation mostly because the carb level is way too high for beer. And the carbonation level is not adjustable because it's partly dependent on the float valve.

 

[truebe]

pepsi was pretty ahead of its time on the greenhouse gas issue

 

[thargrav]

Pepsi, Coke and all the others used and still use CO2 to carbonate their sodas just like you use CO2 to carbonate your beer. This has nothing to do with the greenhouse gas issue.

 

[truebe]

stripping co2 out of the air and putting it into our soda is a pretty brilliant solution to the problem. especially back then.

 

[thargrav]

Pepsi did not strip CO2 out of the air - a carbonator uses compressed CO2 gas to carbonate.

 

[l3asturd]

Are you guys being serious? haha

 

[l3asturd]

Actually it does not take CO2 from the air but it is a carbonator, or at least what's left of one.

You feed it CO2 at 100 PSI and tap water at 40 - 75 PSI.
The fitting in the center with the black cord coming out is a self contained float valve.

You can't use one of these for carbonation mostly because the carb level is way too high for beer. And the carbonation level is not adjustable because it's partly dependent on the float valve.

Thanks for the explanation, I was definitely curious to try it out. I saw a video of a guy carbing his beer by cycling it through this for 8 minutes on youtube.

 

[thargrav]

He was using it to force carbonate. I never considered force carbonating through a carbonator pump but it would work. You would just need to figure out what percent of your beer needed to cycle through to reach the right carbonation level. My guess would be 1/3 of the keg.

 

[BobG]

I picked up an old carbonator in a trade.
The carbonation stuff was toast but I took the motor and pump head off and use it for a CIP on a fermenter. Works great.

Cheers,
Bob