cost of carbonation

[partonken]

im wondering if anyone knows how much it would cost in ontario Canada
to buy a CO2 injection system for my beer?

im researching whether its worth filtering my beer then injecting with CO2.
Which should give a little better taste, versus, dextrose carbonation.

cheers!

[theholymackerel]

I've been makin' beer since the early 80's... back when home brewers had to deal with crappy supplies.

I have an extraordinary sense of smell and taste and I can tell ya that force carbonation, and natural carbonation have ABSOLUTELY NO difference in taste or smell. CO2 is CO2 is CO2.

You can do the "Shake , Rattle, and Roll" method to force carbonate in less than 5 min, most folks that force carbonate do it the easy way and simply put the beer at 10 PSI for a week and a half to two weeks. Or you can natrally carbonate with sugar. Natural carbonation also takes roughly two weeks and is the cheapest and easiest way to carbonate.

The only downside of natural carbonation is a wee bit of sediment on the bottom of the bottle or keg. I don't find this to be a problem 'cause I drink good beer outta the proper glassware and leave the last 1/4 inch of beer in the bottle. One up-side of natural carbonation is the tiny, fine bubbles. I find when I force carbonate my beer I get coarser bubbles, which doesn't matter, as it's just astetics and doesn't affect flavor.



PS: I've observed the difference in bubbles between both methods of carbonation and can find no scientific explanation for it, yet I know it to be true from observation. Can anyone explain why this is?

[punkin]

I use a CO2 keg system and force carbonate at 55psi for 2 days. As that's about how long my fridge takes to pull down a couplea kegs to temperature, it works out pretty much perfect.
Only upside to carbonating in bottles is that you can take em with ya to friends house (the get shook up and cloudy though), the rest is all golden.
Think about NO MORE BOTTLING, NO MORE WaSHING BOTTLES, no huge storage cupboards for maturing beer and empty bottles...etc etc

I'd never go back to bottling homebrew beer, although i'm a quantity rather than quality man....

It doesn't matter what a keg system costs, it'll pay you back for ever.

[Bootliquor]

Punkin,
I have been straight-grain brewing from the mid-80's on, and also force carbonate, although I usually do so at 40PSI. A valuable adjunct to your kit would be an "over-pressure bottler" that is described in Papazians "Home Brewer Companion". It allows you to fill bottles (I use the flip-top variety), using your keg and CO2 system...you lose no "fizz" from the beer and if used carefully makes no mess.... I'm glad I took the time to make one, and I use it all the time.

[Uncle Jesse]

http://morebeer.com/view_product/18250/102291

[punkin]

Yeah, i've seen the different types of systems. For the amount of times i go camping (once every two months or so) for a fish or a hunt, or the times i go to BBQ's etc, i just buy beer.


It's not a drama to me, was just pointing out that it's the only negative i could think of when comparing brew bottling to kegging.

[mrotch]

When I need to take some of my kegged beer to a party - I use (gasp) 2 liter soda bottles.

I drill out the cap and put a cornelius keg fitting on it - then after filling with beer, I top off the carbonation with my CO2 tank using the corny keg attachment pop the fitting on and, squeeze the air out, set the regulator to 40 PSI and shake....

Works perfectly - I don't worry about the beer getting "light-struck" since it goes into a cooler or a fridge and it gets drunk so darn fast it doesn't spoil.

I only use this method when I cant transport my corny keg setup - it works great for five or six 2 liter bottles that are getting consumed immediately - I wouldn't store it in them.

[nlantz]

im new to ontario and seeing as how noone really answerd the cost of it
i got my setup from leeners in the states when i lived there but i recently got a shipment from them that took a week to get here and for 200 bucks ish +price of filling co2 you can get a setup

[Puma]

im new to ontario and seeing as how noone really answerd the cost of it
i got my setup from leeners in the states when i lived there but i recently got a shipment from them that took a week to get here and for 200 bucks ish +price of filling co2 you can get a setup

A welding suply place can fill your tank and it should run around $15-$20 for 5lb canester

[muckanic]

PS: I've observed the difference in bubbles between both methods of carbonation and can find no scientific explanation for it, yet I know it to be true from observation. Can anyone explain why this is?

I seem to recall some chat on HBD years ago which suggested that naturally-produced CO2 didn't just dissolve in the brew, but also underwent some sort of chemical reaction which meant it came out of solution slower at atmospheric pressure.

[sedstar]

To ME???

just from physics and chemistry training in HS and university? I wanna remember that the size of a naturally occuring surface bubble is a thing of the surface tension, atmospheric pressure, and density of the liquid, and the speed of the gas coming back out of solution.

I VAGUE-ly remember back in university days, that if you let "some ying yang freshman" operate the CO2 setup, they tend to over-do it, and you get exceptionally foamy beer out of the tap?