Of course, good cellar practices should help keep your oxygen levels low in the process of making a beer before the product hits a brite tank. This will help with the freshness and brighter flavors of what you are serving to customers whether across the bar or in packaging.
Nitro carbing can add a great texture to your products as well, but regardless of style, making sure the beer never has high oxygen levels in the first place will help keep your nitrogenating process to stay within specifications.
“Also, we’ve found that nitrogenating while maintaining a higher head pressure quickens the process, but your mileage may vary,” said Graham Strong, Senior Brewer for Topa Topa Brewing.
Although Bent Water Brewing doesn’t do many nitro beers, Head Brewer and Director of Quality, Adam Denny Golab, said the Lynn, Massachusetts facility has had great success with using nitrogen to do the initial purge on its brites.
“Nitrogen is cheaper than CO2 and isn’t facing the same shortage,” Denny Golab said. “We changed our purge procedure to use mostly nitrogen and finish with CO2.
“This has reduced our CO2 use without impacting our ability to minimize brite tank O2 levels.”
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Denny Golab added that using the brewery’s Mettler Toledo InTap helped them in validating the procedure.
Evan Rouse, a co-founder, and CPO for Braxton Brewing said the Kentucky brewery also used nitro in a similar way.
“Before upgrading our canning line from an in-line Wild Goose to a rotary head mono-block CFT, we were using in-line nitrogen dosing to reduce the DO in the finished product at the canning line,” Rouse said.
Using nitro in place of CO2 in these instances can help alleviate potential cost differences that your brewery may encounter should the ability to get the proper amount of bulk CO2 at this time is a detriment.
Photo courtesy Topa Topa/David Santamaria
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