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Using Dry Ice to Carbonate?
One of the guys who helps me brew came up with an interesting idea the other day. Why not use small dry ice pellets to carbonate bottled beer? Obviously the amount would have to be measured very carefully, but it seems as if you could get rid of the sediment left by natural carbonation...
Interested to hear thoughts from others on this.
Hmmm....found one answer to my question:
http://www.bodensatz.com/staticpages/in … edures-FAQ
Has anyone experimented with using dry ice to pressurize bottles without any sediment?
Now there's something I've never heard of before. However, a guy in a former brew club we were in was a chemistry professor at the University who does a lot of similar stuff with dry ice, so I put the question to him.
He puts on shows for local highschools where he puts a small piece of dry ice into a plastic soda bottle with a bit of water, then caps it. The thing explodes quite impressively.
Moral: dry ice can be extremely dangerous and we strongly discourage you from trying to do this!
Reply From the Chem Prof Scott
If I understood your question clearly, you should use 0.58 cm^3 or 0.92g of dry ice to produce 500mL of nonpressurized CO2. Careful, a mistake and you've made yourself a bomb!...but let me come and watch :-)
our comment to that
Since according to Mark Hibbert "green beer" already contains about 0.90 volumes of CO2 at 20C (please check his tables for other temperatures, as it varies dramatically), then we'd obviously need about 1 to 1.5 grams of dry ice to carbonate 500ml of beer.
However - and here's the cincher - under normal conditions carbonation forms very slowly in beer over a period of a week or more. Because it happens so slowly, the beer is able to absorb the carbonation which is produced. If you tried the trick with dry ice - even if you did put in the proper amount - it would release the entire amount of carbonation in only a few seconds. This would almost definitely cause a very violent explosion, so please do not try this!
Although I'd be risking life and limb, I still have this strange desire to try this...
Hmmm...the more I research this, the more I have to emphasize to anyone reading this who may think it sounds like a good idea - DON'T DO IT. You can very easily create an extremely dangerous bomb. People who try to force carbonation in 2 liter plastic bottles are often getting injured because they used too much dry ice - it would be very easy to use too much in a small beer bottle.
OK, my word of warning is done. 
I too at one time was searching for a way to sediment free bottling. As it turns out it seems the only way to safely do this is to force carbonate with the proper pressure from some type of vessel to a bottle. This of course costs more $$$$$. I would just as well use the old priming sugar measurement I know works and take my sediment like a man. It doesn't hurt you and if you pour slowly into a glass/cup/mug , little to none gets out. I have seen dry ice plastic soda bottle bombs and I would hate to see a glass one--that could be very dangerous!!! Just my 2 cents worth.
I personally don't mind the sediment, but I've been giving a lot of bottles away to friends who usually forget to leave a little at the bottom (or they just drink straight from the bottle)...
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