does anyone here have experience with bottling their own carbonated drinks? i am trying to find information about it, but i don't see anything about how they can get the drink into the bottle and then put a cap onto it without the bottle losing pressure. i'd also like some shilling for affordable devices to do it at home
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I used to brew beer. Homebrew typically goes in the bottle flat. You add a small amount of sugar (called a primer or bottling charge,) then cap it, the yeasts eat the sugar and carbonates the beer.
doesn't that eat away at the existing sugar in the beer? i'm wanting to mix some of my own syrups and maintain the taste of it from the moment it's bottled. the yeast would probably change it to be more sour than i want
Nearly all of the sugar is consumed during fermentation. Otherwise, you'd just put a cap on the bottle and wait for it to explode. It takes practice (or a cheat sheet) to get the bottling charge right, so the yeast consumes the sugar to get the carbonation right.
This is obviously not going to transfer to beverages which are entirely sugar.
I looked into doing it but unless you have a source for cases of syrup it doesn't seem at all practical. Buying juice to carbonate is going to be more expensive than buying soda.
Carbonate cold brewed yerba mate. Incredibly cheap, tasty.
>Buying juice to carbonate is going to be more expensive than buying soda.
They sell extracts for this. Root beer seems to be a favorite.
i'm trying to make colas, so i need the sweetness to stay. the only other simple method i can think of is dropping a tiny bit of dry ice into the bottle and capping it, but the only way that is cost effective is to do it when you have hundreds of bottles to make since the dry ice evaporates after a day in your freezer
Dry ice method sounds awful to do. You would need tocweigh each piece or your results will be wildly inconsistent.
The kegging kit, counter pressure wand, and bottle capper shouldn't be more than 200-250 dollars usd. Then you just need the consumables, which are pretty cheap. You can also use the keg to dispense your carbonated beverage if you don't want to bottle it if you have a fridge to stuff it in.
I was making 5 gallons of sparkling water for around 20 cents, and 5 gallons of strong yerba mate soda for like 5 dollars.
did you DIY the entire system? the diagram you sent me makes me think i can make a dangerously bootleg version by putting some pipes and valves together. i just need to think of an alternative to the keg since i don't make big enough batches to justify one
Yeah, I got all the stuff to make a 5 tap kegerator for myself, but before that I just had a regulator hooked into a co2 and then thst went into a keg. It's all very easy to do.
You'll need a proper regulator, and co2 tank. All the fittings and tubing are standardized for the corny kegs.
You could definitely make a counter pressure filler with parts from home depot or wherever. They sell 1 gal and 2.5 gal corny kegs.
I kept 2.5 gallons of switchel in my kegerator for a summer along with the yerba mate. It was so sweet.
what causes the liquid to leave the keg? the diagram has the gas input and liquid output all on the top. seems like only the CO2 would be leaving out the top
There's a roughly quarter inch stainless straw that goes all the way to the bottom of the keg on the liquid out side.
oh okay, thanks. i think i can make a similar container for myself then. watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orpfub1Q-AI and it looks like a simple and elegant set up. i keep forgetting to do research on this, but hopefully you are okay with spoonfeeding me some more; can i just buy any regular tank of CO2 for welders? i don't want to waste money on food grade stuff if i don't have to, but i also don't want contamination getting into my drink
It's sort of a debated question about the safety of food grade vs non for carbonated beverages. Do a little reading about the actual difference between the two and make a decision for yourself. Some homebrew shops will sell the beverage grade co2/tanks and do a tank swap for the price of the gas. Welding shops will sell the industrial grade co2, and do a similar tank swap for you.
this is a hotbutton issue.
claims you will read
1. food grade is free from oil and chemical contaminants that could be present
2. food grade is the same gas but there is some kind of record keeping behind it for health code purposes.
3. contaminants would be just as dangerous in industrial gas, so it's all the same.
the place I buy from supplies most of the local restraunts and beer joints, and most of its marking is beverage related. and they have a single source for c02. so in this specific shop it's all food grade. but the other arguments you will hear may or may not also be valid depending on circumstances.
I wouldn't worry about paying a premium though. it's kind of baked in. there is a nuscince premium for sure when i swap 2.5 and 5 lb bottles, but the amount of gas you use in a personal operation will be a rounding error in cost.
Oof, I made bottle bombs on my first attempt at a cider. It was a scary day when I heard a gunshot in the basement, only to go down and find that only HALF the bottles had exploded (I assume one that exploded took out the surrounding ones, but not all). Did not know what to do other than cover the rest with a tarp and hit them with a shovel to explode the rest. What a mess. Did my math way more carefully after that.
Cap with balloons.
It's very easy. What you need is a big plastic botte (About 1 or 2 gallons) and a 0.8cm. My dad tried to do hydrohoney, but it tastes like shit
The colder water is, the more CO2 it can hold. What I assume they do is get the soda to like 32.5F, maximize the CO2, and the bottle it. Once it gets to a more normal refrigerator temp, the soda can’t maintain the solution, and CO2 gases out into the bottle, increasing the internal pressure.
you just carbonate it and put the cap on.
you can DIY it using tank of CO2, a regulator and an adapter that goes over the bottle opening and clamps down. It's dangerous though, since bottles will explode on occasion.
Here's a description of how to do it;
https://www.seriouseats.com/pros-cons-diy-carbonation-rig
This is how you do it properly.
You would carbonate your liquid in a cold keg and then use the counter pressure bottle filler to fill each bottle then use a capping tool.
is that the standard way that all soda is bottled?
To an extent. If your liquid is foamy like beer you fill from the bottom, but carbonated water could be filled higher up.
If you're bottling pre carbonated liquids it just works most efficiently to use a setup like that. Nicer filling wands will have a purge button that lets you put co2 into each bottle. That will help preserve carbonation and flavor if it matters to you.
Im this guy
That pic is very basic but yes that is the concept of csd beverages. If you didn't have that counter pressure then Co2 will rush in causing huge foaming and flooding issues.
If the counter pressure is too high then not enough Co2 will come in and you will have flooding issues. If you are going to do commercial micro production you will want an air and Co2 regulators and a relief valve. You can also add in a solenoid that can control the filling valve. Because for rotary type filling you have air stems so as the beverage fills from the bottom of the container first, it pushes air pressure out once the air is out and the container is filled with product, the ball bearing for a ball valve closes back over the stem. If you couldn't get that air out as it fills, you gonna have foaming and empties. This is how gravity filling works. I used to make 1500 cans a minute on a 126 head filler bowl that transfers the cans into a 12 head seamer to attach the can lids with a double seam.
bro picrel are $9 to brew 5-6 gallons of beer.
you can get it at your local supermarket.
in the same aisle you can get kits to brew non-alcoholic ginger beer, cider, non-alc cider, even soda.
just follow the instructions, make sure you sterilize EVERYTHING thoroughly and you're good.
I worked at coca-cola for 14 years.
How its done in the factory is the carbonation is mixed as well as the deaerated water inside a tank that injects Co2 through nozzles. Then its shot through a main pipe to the filler bowl. Its only open for seconds (unless theres a stop/break down) but the reason why it doesn't lose Co2 after injecting is because its cold. The gas will stay compressed inside the beverage as long as its cold. You want it no higher than 6 degrees C. Can go higher but you waste Co2 raw materials from having to inject more initially to account for the warmer temp.
For doing it yourself, you can use lids that are designed to pump Co2 through. You can also use Co2 'balls' like in beer brewing these days (though for beer its best to naturally create Co2 with a teaspoon of raw sugar in each bottle for yeast to fart out Co2).
For coca cola the Co2 setting is 3.75 bar of pressure. How many bars really depends on the viscosity (liquid density) of the beverage plus the temperature of the beverage as you inject Co2. There is an actual maths formula to work it out manually but its long and I cannot remember it.
there wasn't anything fancy like filling the bottle with CO2 before the liquid comes in?
my father said that he thinks a filter would be good at catching any nasty stuff if it was there, and that welding CO2 should be high quality already in order to make the welding process clean. still, i will do more research on it
No that's not how it works. You aren't filling a bottle with Co2, you are injecting Co2 into a liquid that is inside a container. You have to think of it in that way.
i understand, but all these demonstration videos of people filling bottles with beer always include a step where they flush the oxygen out of the bottle. maybe it's something only beer needs
Yes in a brewery that filling process is still the same as standard csd glass and PET filling.
>The bottle comes down to the rotary filler
>a valve stem inserts into the bottle
>the valve stem at the top as a ball valve to close the stem
>as liquid is filled into the bottle, the air already present in the bottle will escape through the valve stem, its pressure will lift the ball bearing for it to escape
>as the liquid completely fills there is no more air pressure to keep the ball bearing lifted so closes the stem again
>some stuff I haven't explained is undone, as the bottle is ready to shift on a transfer conveyor chain to head towards the capper/seamer
I could get into much more about that and how its exactly done (more valves basically) but just answering what you are asking.
thank you, i got a lot good info from this thread. apparently all of these carbonation hobbyists only care about beer, which is why i was not finding anything when doing research for bottling soft drinks
Yeah its tricky, most people just buy a soda stream and use those Co2 cartridges they come with.
I make sparkling mineral water. and yes the info space is beer dominated to be sure.
unfortunately I have not experimented much with bottling. I did put some of my juice in some grolsh swing tops a few times. it was more emptying a keg so I could refill it so it wasn't really a full effort attempt. but just filling bottles and camping them had pretty weak results.
it would be nice if I could get a bottled product even close to the quality of the kegged stuff. I don't know how realistic that is on home /improvised equipment.
I'm considering getting a counterfill wand deal and putting bottles in the freezer first to keep everything cold prior to the filI. i have not messed with soda but if it's force carbed the same issue will be present here. you still would need to carefully bottem fill because turbulence forces co2 out of the fluid to a degree and you will lose some of that snap.
I would also still co2 purge. beergays do it because oxygen ruins beer, but I bet a soda, especially a home made one not loaded with preservatives, would also oxidize.
If you don't purge pre carbonated drinks they will go somewhat flat from even a small amount of oxygen in the bottle.
Gotta bring your bottles to a natural soda spring. One of my meccas to visit one of the goods in the states.