Nitroless pour

Some day I would like to set up a nitrogen tap for nitro pouts as well as a Wine tap. Haven’t researched it yet I know I would need to different regulators but I think the gas is the same. Anyway what I’ve been doing is instead of using the syringe I fill the a tulip style glass 1/2 full and swirl the heck out of it and build up a big head seems to do the trick. Anyone else do this?

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I used to use a gas distributor that would fill my regular CO2 tank with beer gas or some call it N-gas. It was supposedly 25/75 CO2/N. Combined with a Guinness faucet stout came out wonderful. The one problem I noticed was after time on that gas the low amount of CO2 could not keep the beer carbonated as well and it would start to get flat. I think a better solution would have been to serve on mix and keep it pressurized with just CO2.

I have been told that the beer gas mix is too high pressure or something to put in a regular CO2 tank so I was taking his word for it.

I did find that using a Stout faucet, I also have a Murphy’s, and a little fiddling with pressure that using just CO2 made for a nice pour.

I kind of lost interest in fooling with the gas mix and Stout faucets stuff and just put Stout on regular taps.

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I think with beer gas you need to serve at a higher pressure to avoid losing carbonation, and likely increase your line length to add resistance.

I don’t think you want to serve wine with beer gas. It may end up with too much bite from the CO2. Straight nitrogen for wine would work well, but with stouts, they’d go flat.

No I won’t I thought the nitro was straight nitrogen

Sorry to be late to the party. I’m way behind on my forum reading. In answer to the original question from @brew_cat, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Germany where I have often seen a bartender stir a beer with something like a coffee stir stick to whip up a foamy head.

As for CO2, Nitrogen and Beer Gas: A key point here is that CO2 dissolves in most liquids while Nitrogen does not. That’s why CO2 pressurized beer is nice and bubbly (carbonated) while Nitrogen pressurized wine is not - thank goodness.

We are lucky that the CO2 pressures which carbonate our beer to enjoyable levels also happen to be about the right pressure to dispense the beer through reasonable lengths of small diameter line. The somewhat lower carbonation levels typical of porters and stouts tend to not generate much of a frothy head however. To generate the thick creamy froth of the classic “perfect pint of Guinness”, we need more pressure and a stout faucet which includes a restrictor plate. Turning up the CO2 pressure results in over-carbonated beer however. That’s where beer gas comes in. With 75% Nitrogen and 25% CO2 you can dispense at higher pressures with only about 1/4 of the pressure contributing to carbonation of the beer. Some bars and restaurants, with keg rooms a distance from the taps, use beer gas so they can set higher pressures to overcome the resistance of long beer lines without over-carbonating the beer. (Larger diameter beer lines may be a better solution.)

As @hd4mark pointed out, beer gas is typically dispensed in Nitrogen tanks, and with Nitrogen regulators, which are designed for higher pressures than CO2 equipment.

Most of the gases we use (like CO2 and Propane) are actually in liquid form in the tank, with some gas on top, at least until the tank is nearly empty. The gas pressure in the tank, and on the high pressure side of the regulator, is a function of the kind of gas and its temperature. (That’s why the high pressure gauge on the regulator doesn’t really tell us how much gas is left. The pressure only begins to drop when the tank is nearly empty.)

At room temperature, the pressure in a tank of Nitrogen will be higher than the pressure in a tank of CO2. The tanks, valves, regulators are designed accordingly. Mixed gas in a CO2 tank could over-pressurize things, which is obviously dangerous, so Nitrogen equipment is used.

If you want to dispense both stout from a stout faucet and other beers for a traditional faucet, you probably want two separate gas sources, one beer gas and one pure CO2. You may also want multiple regulators off the CO2 source, to vary pressure by beer style.

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Nice explanation @Steve thanks. I’ve used the stirring trick