Helium carbonation

[broncobowsher]

OK, this is an odd thought. Probably belongs elsewhere but the knowledge to answer it is probably here. If the mods decide to move let me know where you move it to.

So regular beer/soda is carbonated by dissolving CO2 in water. But there are a few beers that are fizzed with Nitrogen (fizzed just sounds better than calling it carbonated without carbon). So that got me thinking. Could you get a fizzy drink with Helium infusion like you can with Nitrogen or CO2? I suspect the biggest downfall will be Helium is a fast gas, so the drink would go flat rather fast. Anyone ever play with this?

Yea, not your normal decompression question. But hopefully you can see why I asked it here.

 

[RyanT]

That would be an expensive beer!

 

[Esprise Me]

For real tho... what would it do to your voice?

 

[Angelo Farina]

Good beer is not "carbonated". The CO2 comes from the action of microorganisms, which attach the malt or the sugar and convert it to alcohol, releasing CO2. If this happens inside an air tight recipient, CO2 cannot escape and remains dissolved in the liquid.
Coca Cola or sparkling water are carbonated...
I would never drink beer or sparking wine which is artificially carbonated, exactly as I will never drink anything containing artificial colours, flavours, etc...
So the only possibility is to make sparkling water by adding helium instead of CO2.
The solubility of helium in water is much lower than CO2, so the amount you can solve for a given pressure is much less.
You would need to compress helium at 200 bars inside a steel cyilinder together with water, for making the water to sparkle significantly when poured out...

 

[The Ruttmeister]

Angelo understates the problem...

Helium has the lowest water solubility of any single gas.

CO2 at standard temp and pressure is roughly 1.5 grams per Kg of water.

Helium is 1.5 milligrams per Kg.

So lower by a factor of 1000.
I suspect that 200 BAR isn't even close to enough!

That said, Nitrogen is down at 15mg per Kg, but still works, so who knows.

Brewers are using the nitrogen (not just to push it down the pipes and out of the tap) because it forms smaller bubbles than CO2 (which gives a noticeably different mouth feel). It also might have some benefits due to being less reactive, but I doubt that's anything measurable.
It wouldn't be hard to try... you just need a tank of He and someone willing to let you abuse a beer keg.

I'm curious what other gasses might do to the bubbles... but most of the solubility data is for horrible things that I wouldn't want in my beer.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Yes, the solubility of Helium is really small. But remember that solubility is expressed as mass, whilst the bubbles are given by the gas volume.
As Helium has a molar mass which is roughly 1/10 of CO2 (4 kg/kmol vs 44 kg/kmol), a small mass of Helium will produce a lot of bubbles...

 

[The Ruttmeister]

Lets do the full numbers:
1kg of water (because I don't have solubility numbers for gases in beer)

0.0015g of dissolved He.
He is 4g/mol. Volume of 1 mol of He at standard temp and pressure: 22 cm³
Or, 1kg of water could contain 0.00825 cm³ of He.

15g of dissolved CO₂
CO₂ is 44g/mol. Volume of 1 mol of CO₂ at standard temp and pressure: 23.9 cm³
Or 8.15cm³ of CO₂ that could bubble out of your liter of beer (roughly a liter I guess).

For comparison, Nitrogen!

0.015g of disolved N₂
Nitrogen gas is 28.01 g/mol. Volume of 1 mol of N₂ at standard temp and pressure: 22.4cm³
So, 0.012cm³ of N₂

TL/DR
Helium would only produce about 2/3rds of the volume of gas when compared to N₂. But N₂ is only providing a tiny fraction of the gas compared to CO₂...

So, it would probably work yes. Although your beer will be less fizzy than a nitro stout, which isn't very fizzy to begin with.

There's some huge assumptions here. Like just how carbonated a beer actually is (these numbers are theoretical max at room temp and pressure, not the conditions the beer is stored at), or how fast the helium will off-gas.
CO₂ is a bitterent (that's why carbonated water tastes horrible), so how much to put into beer is actually a critical choice and part of the fermenting process. Plus how burpy do you want your consumers to be? Part of the reason for making nitro stout is further controlling or even eliminating the CO₂ flavour, as well as the different bubble structure.

There is also nothing to stop you dissolving more than one gas into your beer... although who knows what that would do to your bubble structure (I'm going to guess you'll get something close to the normal CO₂ sizes, assuming that is the largest fraction).

I don't see a fundamental reason why it wouldn't work. Its not like it needs a huge volume of He to try it. The bigger problem is getting the He into the beer... I know a great local craft brewery, not sure they are going to be interested in trying to make helium beer though! Hopefully you drink the beer before all the Helium escapes through the walls of the keg.

It's been a very long time since I did any chemistry, so my working might be wrong... Plus my numbers were pulled from el' goog, so might be wrong.

 

[broncobowsher]

That was in interesting read. Learned a few things I wasn't expecting. I know CO2 in water alters the taste, didn't think about how that would change by going Nitrogen infusion (nitro beers). Interesting. The liquid Nitrogen ice cream has a different texture compared to regular ice cream is about my only reference point I can compare to and that isn't really that relevant.

I have helium and a booster. I'm thinking of giving it a shot sometime. A little research ahead of time is usually a good idea. At this point I see no reason not to try it. Guessing the fizz will be finer and shorter lived. But that is just a theory right now.

Put some helium in beer, call it 'light beer', 'lightweight beer'. Just stupid random thoughts.

 

[Storker]

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