Check Your Inlet Gases

We sell blenders. When I started working here and told people I worked for a place that makes gas blenders, the immediate thought reaction is a kitchen blender with gasoline. Not only is that gross, but who needs that? That’s not a thing.

We always want to make sure our customers have the right blend, which is why we still have slide rules while we use our EasyBlend app. Using partial pressures to ensure the right amount of CO2 to keep your beers in equilibrium is our wheelhouse. Before gas blenders became a standard for this industry, people were using compressed air (yuck) or pre-mixed cylinders. Pre-mixed cylinders are great, so long as you have the right blend!

I had talked to a customer of ours who was sending their blender back for a repair, which involves a plethora of questions. What’s the current blend, what issues are you seeing, and so on. It was a Trumix® Double 25% CO2 / 70% CO2 blend, and he was seeing some weird carbonation issues. I plugged some of his information into the EasyBlend app and found that this blend should work, which means there could be an issue with his system, like temperature or line restriction. After asking a few more questions, he threw me for a loop. He was using bulk CO2 and a PRE-MIXED CYLINDER (25% CO2 75% N2) as his inlet gases.

I don’t math very well, so I asked Emily for help with this estimation. Using partial pressures, she found that his 25% CO2 / 70% CO2 blend would look more like 43% CO2 / 78% CO2. That would cause some carbonation issues!

Our blenders are equipped with inlet labels that give you guidelines for inlets pressures and gases, so make sure the gases are plumbed correctly at the right pressures!