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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 27 2018, @04:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the sales-are...-flat? dept.

The UK’s biggest wholesaler has begun rationing beer, cider and soft drinks as rising demand amid the heatwave and England’s World Cup campaign comes up against a shortage of food-grade carbon dioxide gas (CO2) which is hitting supplies.

Booker, which supplies thousands of convenience stores including the Londis, Budgens and Premier chains, as well as restaurant chains including Wagamama and Carluccio’s, is limiting beer and soft drinks purchases to 10 cases per customer and cider to five cases. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/26/beer-rationed-as-uks-food-grade-carbon-dioxide-runs-low

This is a serious problem as it reads as if they're limiting stores and restaurants. Not individuals though most would not need 10 cases. Unless there was a run on beer :)

Somehow, can't we fix climate change and the beer problem at the same time?


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday June 28 2018, @08:25AM

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday June 28 2018, @08:25AM (#699724) Journal

    That sounds right down the line of what I was told... that is the product itself was pure, but the various grades were in the accountability to where the jugs have been.

    If they filled a jug that had an unknown history, who knows what was in that jug before? Sure, it was marked and valved for CO2, but say the guy had left the thing outside with the valve wide open? Or worse yet, something else got sucked in because it was empty and thermal expansion/contraction ( i.e, empty, laying in a pool of contaminated water )? What if he had used it to store compressed air from an old oily compressor? ( If you have used old compressors, you know how oily that air can be! ). You would never get that oil back out of the jug!

    If you know the history of where your jug has been, and know you have never ran it completely down ( its customary to return the jug with maybe 100PSI pressure still in it, just to make sure the positive pressure will blow out contaminants as the jug is connected ), if you are willing to certify where the jug has been, it will be filled with clean CO2, and you can use it as such. I was told it was not cost effective to maintain separate filling stations for each grade of CO2 on such small scales as 20 pound jugs, which are commonly used for refrigerant, welding shield gas, beverages, and paintball gun propellant.

    But if you are talking humongous amounts, like process CO2, it will then meet individual customer spec.

    I had to go back and do research again on this... found several websites which clarified the meanings of the grades of CO2.

    I first started making my own sodapop about 20 years ago... when I was getting priced out of the market with people wanting over a buck for a 2-liter bottle of the stuff. I met their price-hike with a cord-cut, and started making my own, as it was much cheaper for me to do so, not only that, I could now make whatever flavor I wanted to toy with. The only trick was how to carbonate, and once I found out how easy it was, ( a jug of CO2, regulator, hose, tire fitting, tire valve, and a 2-liter soda bottle ), I bought commercial soda no more.

    Thanks to this group, I now have a much better understanding of the grades of CO2, of which I was ignorant other than what I was told. And feel relieved - actually much relieved - that I have not been poisoning myself using the stuff intended as use for refrigerant, even though at the time I started using it, I was getting it from a more distant welding shop, and they had told me it was all the same. Welding gas, refrigerant, paintball gun propellant, beverage, whatever. All came out of the same spigot at the air distillery. All the fittings are the same. Apparently each gas has its own specific thread for its fittings, so as to avoid misfills with the wrong gas.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]