You're raising the pH of your beer by doing that. And adding who knows what (although likely cheap bicarbonate). Unless they're marked food safe, don't use them. Even if they were marked food safe, I wouldn't use them.
Keeping in mind a wild-assed guess is not an experiment. when dealing with stuff your body is going to have to deal with, use caution. Those tablets combine an acid and a base. Unless they're food grade, don't do it.
I've done some tests on adding salts and modifying pH of beer, you can read about it in September's BYO magazine. I've found with dark beers, raising the pH a point or two mellows the roastiness but if you do the same to light beers, they become lifeless and, using the wine term, flabby. On the other hand, light beers can be improved by lowering the pH a point or two, making a bright flavored beer out of one that was lifeless. So if I were to try to carbonate using baking soda, I'd add acidity as well, food-grade lactic acid or phosphoric acid, to balance the change in pH of the beer.I must admit, I was somewhat intrigued by the idea when I read the OP... (the "idea" being quick carbonation!)
...and got thinking about the whole food grade angle.
Considering beer is by nature acidic, the "solution" seemed obvious....baking soda!!!
And, as I currently have a 5L keg half full of a dumper that has gone flat, I filled a soda bottle with the beer and some baking soda.
Obviously it changes the taste of the beer significantly, but I can report that it otherwise works fairly well...fwiw.
I most certainly wouldn't to it to a beer I would otherwise drink. That I would drink even it was flat...
But some s*** that just needs a bit of CO2......there you go! Effective and food safe.
makes sense
You have to put quite a bit of lactic in to notice the flavor. It affect tartness. Same goes for phosphoric acid. Baking soda adds saltiness if you add enough but at the amounts I'm talking about, you'd never notice. That was the basis of the article, a serendipitous discovery I made running a sensory training class. You can put in enough of the salts to affect flavor, particularly acid, alkali, magnesium, sulfate and chloride, but it takes quite a bit.makes sense
don't think there is much we can do about the change in flavor caused by adding pretty much anything post-fermentation though...
baking soda, lactic acide, etc all are going to be IMO noticable
would be kind cool though if they weren't
Fair enough. As I mentioned, the beer I used to test was a dumper anyway, so any analysis should be taken with a grain of "salt" (pun intended)
I just signed up to BYO, so I could read your article!
(plus having lots and lots of other articles now to catch up on...)
You could add them sequentially....
So far baking soda has only been a bit more foam...but if add some of what Nosybear mentions at the same time, it could get interesting...
what's the fun in that!?
