Gas is the invisible fifth ingredient, and its sensory impact is crucial to our enjoyment of beer. From the soft brush of a cask ale to the prickly bite of a light lager, carbonation is the spark that vivifies beer.
Besides being an ingredient, however, carbon dioxide is an invisible workhorse in the brewery—it pushes liquids around the plant, displaces damaging oxygen from lines and vessels, and is the MVP of the packaging line.
Yet CO2 has a dark side—it’s an invisible killer. Dramatic? Perhaps, but CO2 is unquestionably dangerous if improperly handled. Fatalities in the brewery are rare, but they happen, and the threat of asphyxiation is inherent wherever there is compressed CO2.
There are other negatives to consider, from globally fueling the greenhouse effect to locally drawing down your brewery’s operating accounts. Supply-chain turbulence and restrictive supplier contracts in recent years don’t help CO2’s reputation—but “out of sight, out of mind” is no way to treat an invisible killer that’s also an expensive ingredient with a penchant for disappearing into thin air.
Some attention to the details goes a long way toward maintaining a healthy, profitable relationship with the gas.