To supplement these CO2 shortages, Dorchester Brewing has been using nitrogen instead of CO2 for certain applications. “The impact so far has been mostly around limited allocation.” “Due to our contract, we haven’t seen a price hike from our current CO2 supplier, despite the rising prices in other parts of the market,” said McKenna. Like many craft breweries, Dorchester Brewing has been dealing with shortages of commercial-grade CO2 for its operations (read about all the causes of those shortages here). “It’s used to purge tanks, on the packaging line, in the cellar to carb beer, in the taproom to serve beer - at every stage along the way.”
“We use CO2 everywhere throughout the brewery and taproom,” said Max McKenna, senior marketing manager at Boston-based Dorchester Brewing Co. There are a scary number of applications where a craft brewery uses CO2 in the brewing, packaging and serving process: maintaining proper head pressure on tanks for process applications moving beer or product from one tank to another carbonation of that product scrubbing oxygen prior to packaging packaging of beer in a can filler or keg racker operation pre-purging brite tanks after cleaning and sanitization and pouring draft beer at a restaurant or pub.
