Carbonating a keg with Dry Ice?

[James L]

Guys,

just a thought, How easy would it be to pressurise a keg with dry ice? It would carbonate and cool your beer at the same time? I guess you need to be reasonably careful about how much you put in, but if you have a safety valve on the keg it cant all be too bad...

[drsmurto]

Bad idea, no control and have you seen what happens when you throw a chunk of dry ice in water. Imagine doing that in a liquid that likes frothing up........ messy. Funny, but messy. It also is very poor at cooling the water down. I tried that before in the lab and all i did was fill the place with CO2.....

[James L]

it would be messy wouldnt it...

it was just a thought....

by the way, dont use dry ice to cool your beers down either, my mate had a party, and put all the beers on a heap of dry ice to keep them cool until the guests arrived.. it froze the bottom half of the beer in the bottle and only left the top half drinkable.

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Whilst driving past the BOC in Bell Street a couple of weeks ago, I saw they were selling dry ice for (from memory) $5 a kilogram.

At that point, I was contemplating ways of chilling my wort out of the kettle and considered how much of a mess I might make by throwing a kilo or two into the kettle. I am eager to try it, but I would rather do it somewhere other than my house. Any takers?

[gregb]

I'm picturing that sinking to the bottom of the kettle, then releasing a bunch of gas spraying hot wort all over the place. At best it'll spill your wort and make a mess, at worst you'll sustain some nasty injuries.

Cheers,
Greg

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I'm picturing that sinking to the bottom of the kettle, then releasing a bunch of gas spraying hot wort all over the place. At best it'll spill your wort and make a mess, at worst you'll sustain some nasty injuries.

Cheers,
Greg

Oh, yeah! Exactly what I was thinking, which is why I then went on to think of ways of lowering it remotely using my skyhook and finally decided that it was time to come back to reality...

[James L]

I'll do a small scale experiment at work by putting dry ice into almost boiling water, and i'll tell you what happens... we get packages in dry ice all the time, and i'm getting a little bored of creating fog... i need an explosion...

[gregb]

A little bit in an empty soft drink bottle with the lid screwed tight will spook your co-workers.

Cheers,
Greg

[James L]

ohhh yeh... done that before....

[drsmurto]

I'll do a small scale experiment at work by putting dry ice into almost boiling water, and i'll tell you what happens... we get packages in dry ice all the time, and i'm getting a little bored of creating fog... i need an explosion...

It wont explode but will release CO2 like crazy and bubble like an under water volcano. I've done this a few times to cool water baths in the lab down from 60-70C and it didnt work. But if you want to have fun break the chunk up into lots of little pieces to increase the surface area and then stand back. Ah, lab hijinks.

[sonictruth]

when i used to work in a lab we used to get a small bit of dry ice and put it in a plastic 2ml vial with a snap on lid and then unsuspectingly slip it into someones lab coat while they were working. About 30 seconds later the work got interupted by a loud pop.....completely harmless but lots of fun

[Chris]

I agree with the good doc- funny, but messy.

[Chris]

For that fine creamy head, nothing beats liquid nitrogen...

[rohanbutler]

Yeah i have adlib access to liquid nitrogen at work, and I've wondered if a liquid nitorgen bath (instead of the ice bath) would be the best way to chill my wort?

I don't think the missus would appreciate me bringing home a tank full and putting it in the laundry sink, then cold burning my hands stuffing around with it.

[drsmurto]

Yeah i have adlib access to liquid nitrogen at work, and I've wondered if a liquid nitorgen bath (instead of the ice bath) would be the best way to chill my wort?

I don't think the missus would appreciate me bringing home a tank full and putting it in the laundry sink, then cold burning my hands stuffing around with it.

I'd be very careful about what the wort is in when you put it in the liquid N2 bath. Cracked many a piece of lab quality glassware during my PhD days not taking notice of things. A fermenter would crack, metal would be bloody hard to hang on to.

If you want to ice + salt should get you a few extra degC.

In all fairness tho, a chiller isnt that expensive and makes my life so simple.