Beer Forum

Has anyone every tried using dry ice to carbonate beer in bottles or kegs? I'm wondering if you could do this. It's essentially CO2, correct? If you put in the right amount and then sealed it off so it couldn't escape, it would go into solution, right?

i wouldn't ... but you could.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MBJlBHRkE

While CO2 is CO2 as you said, the problem is with the manufacturing process of the dry ice, not the dry ice itself. Dry ice is made with the intent of using it for external cooling of products and as such is not made to the strict sanitary standards needed to allow it to be used in food/drink products. The equipment will often be contaminated with oils used to keep the equipment running properly and may also contain dirt/dust normally found in an industrial manufacturing facility.

Theoretically, carbonating with dry ice would work just fine. You may be able to find "food grade" dry ice and even nice clean chunks from time to time. However the probability of getting a contaminated piece is quite high.

Wayne

Working out the exact amount of dry ice needed for a given amount of beer, at a given temp, to produce a given volume of Co2 would be a big crapshooting pain in the ass. Promash doesn't seem to have a calculator for this so I'm fucked for starters.

Hope that helps.

I remember reading on another forum about a year ago, someone tried this and it worked. I believe he works with dry ice all the time and was able to calculate how much it took to achieve the proper carbonation.

Speak of the devil...

http://forums.moreflavor.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=25785

that's the post i was looking for. nice

To get around the food grade issue - maybe you can drop the ice in a small amount of water in one corny - and then use a gas jumper to move it over to your keg full of beer. You could even put an inline check valve if you felt so inclined. You could even do the shake method with cold beer to instantly carbonate it.


Mylo