Bottling nitro stout for a comp.

[Jag75]

I know its not possible to bottle a nitro stout . I'm wondering if its possible to take the beer off gas blend , hook up to co2 , change my tap and bottle successfully for a beer competition. Has anybody out there done this ? I want to make sure before I attempt it .

@day_trippr - I know if there's a way to accomplish this you probably know .

 

[day_trippr]

I had to parse that a few times to get where you're going

Yes, it takes some tech to provide the character of a nitro pour outside of an actual faucet because the nitro component is meaningless until the actual moment of dispensing. So, unless you have some widgets in your pocket I think you're going in the practical direction.

Hopefully you have adequate time - stouts are slow to carbonate by conventional (set and forget) methods, and you'll want to hit around 2 volumes I suspect.
Switching to a conventional faucet - especially if you have a bottle filler accessory for one - is definitely a good move.

And in the end, using low pressure with a filler into cold wet bottles is your best bet...

Cheers! (and good luck with the comp! )

 

[Brettomomyces]

I'm sure you can pull this off, might take a couple of rounds of bleeding pressure out of the keg before switching to conventional CO2, but the nitrogen should be the first gas to purge (proportionately).

 

[day_trippr]

Nitrogen really doesn't dissolve. One total release of the PRV and maybe a few seconds of flushing CO2 purge will take care of it

Cheers!

 

[Jag75]

Thanks guys for the responses . Its been on tap ( gas blend) for a week . The comps not until Feb .

Thats another thing I'm wondering . If I move to co2 and fill in Feb shouldnt it be about 1.8 to 2.0 volumes ?

What does gas blend get you volume wise ?

 

[day_trippr]

Again, nitrogen does not actually dissolve in beer to any significant amount, so it's contribution can be discounted, which leaves the partial CO2 pressure to do the carbonation.

At the pressure required for a stout faucet, if you used straight CO2 the beer would be epically overcarbonated. But using beer gas at the proper pressure the CO2 component keeps the keg at the low carbonation level desired while the nitrogen component provides the thrust to ram the beer through the stout faucet's restrictor plate.

Anyway, moving the keg over to straight CO2 for say 2 volumes shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks assuming you already got it part way there...

Cheers!

 

[Vale71]

Thanks guys for the responses . Its been on tap ( gas blend) for a week . The comps not until Feb .

Thats another thing I'm wondering . If I move to co2 and fill in Feb shouldnt it be about 1.8 to 2.0 volumes ?

What does gas blend get you volume wise ?

You can't just switch from beer gas to CO2. Since N2 does not dissolve nor is it used up while dispensing it will remain in the headspace till the end and make it impossible to reach an exact carbonation level. Sure, carbonation will increase somewhat if you start dispensing with pure CO2 but to accurately predict what carbonation level you will reach at a certain point in time (or rather once a certain fill level is reached) will require extremely complex math. If you want to be sure that your beer is properly carbonated for the day of the competition you really need to purge the headspace thoroughly (let's say until N2 drops to 2-5% max) and then start carbonating well in advance. The purging is unfortunately going to use up quite a bit of CO2 depending on how much headspace will be in the keg by that time.

 

[bwible]

I know its not possible to bottle a nitro stout .

At the risk of asking a silly question - why can’t you just use a counter pressure filler and fill bottles out of the keg using beer gas instead of CO2? I’ve never done this, but don’t understand why its not possible.

 

[bracconiere]

At the risk of asking a silly question - why can’t you just use a counter pressure filler and fill bottles out of the keg using beer gas instead of CO2? I’ve never done this, but don’t understand why its not possible.

good question...all he'd have to do is switch the stout faucet to a normal one. stout fauctes making flat beer on purpose and all...

(at least my understanding. and also how do the nitro packs in guieness draught work in cans?)

 

[Vale71]

At the risk of asking a silly question - why can’t you just use a counter pressure filler and fill bottles out of the keg using beer gas instead of CO2? I’ve never done this, but don’t understand why its not possible.

Of course it's possible but you won't get any N2 in the bottles and the beer will be severely undercarbonated for a bottled beer.

 

[Vale71]

how do the nitro packs in guieness draught work in cans?)

They use a nitro widget. Not available to homebrewers also because you'd have to play around with liquid nitrogen which you should never try and do at home...

 

[yoop89]

At the risk of asking a silly question - why can’t you just use a counter pressure filler and fill bottles out of the keg using beer gas instead of CO2? I’ve never done this, but don’t understand why its not possible.

From my understanding you should be able to do exactly this, when I use Beer Gas i generally bottle a few here and there. All I do is bleed off head pressure and bottle as normal. Being that the mix is 25/75 shouldn't the partial pressure(9 psi @ 44°F) be about 2 Vol of CO2?

 

[yoop89]

because you'd have to play around with liquid nitrogen which you should never try and do at home...

Ohhh come on. Who hasnt played with liquid nitrogen before? Nitrogen cannons were an awesome experiment in college(part of my chemistry course). If I still lived in Houghton I would definitely try bottling some nitro beers. From what I recall the liguid Nitrogen was fairly easy to come by as long as you had the proper PPE.

 

[Vale71]

Ohhh come on. Who hasnt played with liquid nitrogen before?

I haven't (yet). It would still be tricky to dose it properly as the amount needs to be very small unless you actually want to turn your beer can into a frag grenade and then there's the fact that details of the widgets are proprietary. Even if as a non-commercial operation you could probably thumb your nose at any extant patent you'd still have to figure out how they work by yourself as I doubt the Guinness company will be willing to tell you...

 

[yoop89]

They no longer use the widget in there bottles but I do agree. The microdosing of nitrogen that they have dialed in is probably a very fine line between that lovely cascade and a bottle blowing up in the back of your car on a warm summer day.

 

[yoop89]

Haha, Ball sells there own widget in a can. You can fill in 7 easy steps! I wonder what the dosing machine would cost to get this right?

https://www.ball.com/na/solutions/m...lities/beyond-beverage-cans/widget-technology

 

[Vale71]

They no longer use the widget in there bottles but I do agree. The microdosing of nitrogen that they have dialed in is probably a very fine line between that lovely cascade and a bottle blowing up in the back of your car on a warm summer day.

There's no nitrogen in the bottles or any other package that does not contain a widget of some sort.

 

[yoop89]

There's no nitrogen in the bottles or any other package that does not contain a widget of some sort.

I cant say with 100% certainty but Guinness Draught bottles definitely exhibit "Nitro" qualities and they contain no widget(I use them exclusively for bottling homebrew as its all my dad drinks).

I can say with certainty that the bottles are pressurized way above normal ales(non nitro). Try popping a cap off quickly(they "explode" off compared to any other beers). The only explanation that I have for that is that they dose each bottle with liquid nitrogen to give it this head pressure.

Sorry to the OP for kind of drifting off topic

 

[Jag75]

No worries guys . The nitro talk is good and interesting. Ive tried bottling nitro and it doesnt work . What happens is exactly what @Vale71 and @day_trippr said. I want to make sure the beer is properly carbed. My last comp I was dinged on fill level , so they grade on everything.

I did see a video where they are adding a certain amount of liquid nitrogen drop to beer but there's more to it . My wife's cousin is a chemical engineer and basically said dont even try and mess with that stuff.

 

[Jag75]

At the risk of asking a silly question - why can’t you just use a counter pressure filler and fill bottles out of the keg using beer gas instead of CO2? I’ve never done this, but don’t understand why its not possible.

The first time I tried this i painted the room with choc milk stout. Took me hours to clean because when I turned the fan off I noticed the ceiling was covered in stout as well .

 

[XPLSV]

Purge an empty keg with CO2. Rack the desired amount of beer (1/2 gallon) from the beer-gas keg into the empty keg. Bleed the pressure out over the course of 24 hours. You won't have any O2 in the keg to oxidize the beer and the nitrogen gas will be coming out of solution first, along with some CO2. You are essentially degassing the beer at this point and it will be rather flat. Go for two days if you want to get even more nitrogen out of solution. Force carb with CO2 to your desired level. Once fully carbonated (there will be some small residual amount of nitrogen in the beer), you essentially have a normally carbonated beer at this point (no nitro effect anymore). Bottle as normal. The beer will obviously have different characteristics than what is being served from your nitro tap, but it should be an acceptable workaround.