Blichmann Quick Carb

Mike and I decided this year to send 8 beers to the National Homebrew Competition (NHC). This is our first year sending beers into competition, so we decided we’d just go all in. So far, we decided to send the following beers: Basic Bitch Brown Ale, Haleiwa (Specialty IPA), Mouth Mittens (Specialty IPA), Pippy Hopstocking (Specialty IPA), Makani Lager, Tongue Hug (Tropical Stout), Salute (Euro Pilsner), and Tijuana Facelift (Fruit & Spice Beer). We were able to brew and lager our beers in time for the competition; however, we did not have enough time to carb them as we normally do. For 99.9% of our beers, we slow carb them over the course of a week before serving. Unfortunately, we need to send out our beers to the NHC judges and did not give ourselves enough time to slow carbonate our beers. 
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Before our anxiety level hit mach 10, Mike reminded me that he had purchased a Blichmann Quick Carb to help us if we were ever in this exact situation. While that lowered my anxiety a bit, we had never used the Quick Carb before. I’m not going to lie, I was skeptical; especially since we use floating dip tubes. I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to sufficiently carb the entire keg if the liquid was just being recirculated from the top of the keg for 40 minutes. However, to our surprise, it worked!

Unboxing

When the Blichmann Quick Carb arrived, we almost returned it. I had watched unboxing videos online that showed the Quick Carb being unboxed. The videos showed it boxed and delivered with a plastic case. However, our Quick Carb came in a boring white box without a case. The literature provided seemed thrown in the box. I thought we may have received a returned item, so I emailed Blichmann. They told me the Quick Carb no longer comes with a plastic case due to "supply chain issues." We decided to keep the Blichmann, but I will say the way the device is packaged leaves much to be desired.

Using the quick carb

Setup and sanitization was easy. We found that we needed to trim the short tubing that goes to the pump to ensure proper installation of the carb stone and tubing. You will need to make up a small bucket of Star San for sanitizing. The pump that is included is a self priming pump which makes sanitation and using the Quick Carb very easy. In fact, the hardest part of the setup was cutting the rubber band and feeding the power supply connection to the outside of the device (our device came with the connection pushed back to behind the pump).

Once the device was sanitized, we followed the instructions and set our regulator per the included carbonation chart. When you first begin the pump, the Carb stone fills the beer with bubbles which you can see in the photos makes the beer look whiter than the other line. When the beer is carbonated, both lines look the same. For our four beers we Quick Carbed, this took approximately 40 mins for each beer. Including purging the lines and sanitizing between kegs, this process took about 4  hours or an hour a keg. 

When finished, we cleaned the device with PBW, rinsed, and sanitized. I airdried the device and then used one of the cases we had from our Dost e-bike battery to store the dry device.

Results

We were impressed with the Quick Carb. We have a carbonation stone we can use with corny kegs, but our Carb stone requires us to open the corny keg and replace the cap. This exposes the beer to oxygen and defeats the purpose of closed transferring the beer. The Quick Carb allows us to keep a closed system during the carbonation process. 

The beer was sufficiently carbonated. However, we wanted a bit more carbonation than we got with the Quick Carb for a competition beer. We decided to put the carbonated kegs on C02 overnight to ensure sufficient bubbles before bottling. However, this isn't really necessary.

Would we use the Quick Carb on every keg we make? No. Absolutely not. However, is this an excellent way to get a keg of beer carbonated well enough to enjoy beers when you are on a time crunch? Absolutely. In fact, this allows us piece of mind that we can brew beers and send them to competition in a very short time frame. For the NHC, we made 4 kegs of each beer and Quick Carbed only one of the kegs. The Quick Carb keg is for competitions while the other 3 kegs are for the keezer and canning.

The ability to Quick Carb means we can brew beers and quickly Carb them for Tastings or competitions. We no longer have to stress about timeliness and have a bit more flexibility on when we can and cannot brew. While every career is different, this is a game changer for us. As teachers, we often find our brew schedules shift a bit based on our energy levels from work. In fact, we would have had to send under-carbonated beer to the NHC competition without the Blichmann.

Start of carbonation

End of Carbonation

Makani Lager after 40 minutes

 Final Thoughts

Is the Blichmann Quick Carb an essential brewery component? As with most homebrew gadgets, that depends. If you are brewing 5 gallons at a time and only a beer every few months, you will probably want to pass on this. However, if you are brewing frequently for competitions or larger batches, you might find the Blichmann a perfect addition to your brewery. For us, the Blichmann is a worthwhile purchase and worth the $199 we spent on it. We have used other quick carbonation methods--carb bursting, shaking/rolling a keg--and the Quick Carb inline carbonation is by far the best and most reliable. The four beers we Quick Carbed were approximately 80-90% carbonated; however, they were fully carbonated after being placed on C02 for serving in our keezer for 24-48 hours (depending on the beer style). Overall, we recommend the Blichmann Quick Carb and find it a useful tool for our brewery needs.

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Cheers!
​2JBC

Note: ​We purchased the Blichmann Quick Carb for use in our brewery. This review is solely based on our use of the unit; we have not received any monetary or products from Blichmann for our review. 

PS. We wouldn't be opposed to receiving free Blichmann gear for future honest reviews. ;)