I am a specialist.
I am a specialist at creating carbon dioxide. I have done it all my life. Do they use Paypal?
Great news, cask beer fans: UK shortage of CO2 menaces fizzy crap taking up tap space
A carbon-dioxide shortage in Blighty may rid bars and pubs of that fizzy nonsense taking up the tap space of proper cask beer. [Oy! Some of us like a good lager – ed.] The UK Food and Drink Federation today issued an alert – just in time for the World Cup – that the country was in danger of running out of the CO2 gas that is …
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Monday 25th June 2018 07:46 GMT werdsmith
"Northern Beer"
As in the style of beer that would be classic traditional northern beer. Pretty crap.
However, ales from northern breweries - as in styles of beer without any particular geographic attachment. Pretty good. Just like decent ales from anywhere else.
"eee, look at tha's flat soothern beer, it's got no foamy 'ead on it ya soft soothern panseh".
"fuck off twat, I want a drink not a shave"
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Monday 25th June 2018 08:40 GMT LucreLout
Re: Or ...
brew your own. Incredibly satisfying. And fizzing.
"Incredibly saitsfying" is a phrase that has been used to describe my home brew as often as the phrase "maginificent and large beyond comprehension" has been used to describe my manhood. So, not very often, or never, if you prefer precision.
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Friday 22nd June 2018 21:21 GMT tfewster
"Government must act with urgency to assess the issue as quickly as possible and support the industry through any period of restricted supply."
1) A Government acting with urgency may have assessed the issue in time for the next world cup,
2) What has a Free Market problem got to do with Government? It's a bit daft the suppliers all shutting down at once, without stockpiling some, but it's bloody stupid not to secure your supply when you know it's an annual shutdown and expect a big demand this year.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 16:50 GMT H in The Hague
Re: Bravo madam!
"A government which does not believe in the invisible hand of the free market is left wing."
Having been in business for over three decades I respectfully suggest that the effectiveness of the invisible hand of the free market is somewhat overestimated. Yes, I believe in mostly free markets, but sometimes we need a bit of regulation to lubricate them, and to protect the vulnerable in society, and the environment.
Incidentally, although the term was coined by Adam Smith (who used it only once in The Wealth of Nations), he also advocated a range of state interventions in markets. See the leader article in one of the sections of this weekend's edition of the Financial Times, that famously left wing newspaper.
So, by your definition Adam Smith is left wing!?!
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Sunday 24th June 2018 08:10 GMT John Stirling
Re: Bravo madam!
A proper conservative government would stick to asking shareholders their friends sponsors in the City
FTFY
Could we please move on from childish tribal stereotyping.
A proper government of whatever philosophical persuasion will act as best they can to deal with the very complex problems they face on a daily basis for the benefit of their electorate.
If we the electorate had slightly higher standards with regard to the honesty of our politicians they would be more honest.
Doesn't matter if you like it, the 'free' (hah) market drives our choice of politician as much as it does markets.
Corruption and dishonesty are inputs into that process as much as anything else and as long as we (political) consumers continue to purchase what is peddled we'll continue to get it.
There are occasional attempts at grown up honest government from the fringes, but they rarely get far.
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Monday 25th June 2018 10:22 GMT tiggity
Re: Bravo madam!
@ John Stirling
"If we the electorate had slightly higher standards with regard to the honesty of our politicians they would be more honest."
Electorate can not do much (I would like a "none of the above" option - that would be fun in our (not very democratic) First Past The Post system if it won
When all the candidates are flawed then the elector is stuck - spoiled ballots ignored, low turnout matters little as even if only a handful of people voted the winning MP would be elected.
At best your choice is do I pick the candidate that is as preferable as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (PITEWASS), the one that is PITEWASS with stick covered in faeces, or the one that is PITEWASS where stick covered in Ebola.
When all choices are varying degree of unwanted, you have no (meaningful) choice
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Sunday 24th June 2018 09:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Bravo madam!
I believe in mostly free markets, but sometimes we need a bit of regulation to lubricate them, and to protect the vulnerable in society, and the environment.
In the UK there's little evidence that the bunglers of government can get the balance right. Telecoms regulation is almost non-existent, energy regulation is prescriptive, intense and interventionist, neither market works well for consumers. Rail regulation has achieved very mixed outcomes, with some excellent operators such as Chiltern, Grand Central and many more that are awful (although the state owned system was even worse in overall performance terms).
The only good example I can think of is water regulation, which usually strikes a good balance between customers, environment, economics and corporate interests. But you'll find few people that will believe that - and even then it is occasionally subject to political meddling.
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Monday 25th June 2018 10:43 GMT tiggity
Re: Bravo madam!
@Ledswinger
"The only good example I can think of is water regulation"
Tell that to people on metered water who shower / bathe themselves & kids less than they would like due to the cost
As we have a few dry days on the trot in the UK, there are already predictions of water shortages / hosepipe bans - most water companies lose huge amounts (over 20% of water lost through leaks before reaching homes / businesses) - massive leakage (waste of resource) does not stop huge monopoly profits and loads of cash going to shareholders. A proper regulatory system for water would stop any consumer price hikes until leakage was low (0 is obviously not possible, but below 5% )would be an initial achievable target)
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Monday 25th June 2018 11:06 GMT Roland6
Re: Bravo madam!
Tell that to people on metered water who shower / bathe themselves & kids less than they would like due to the cost
Depends on what you mean by 'less', when I was growing up having one bath a week was common.
Having moved from unmetered to metered, I think, unless your household is a very high water user there little in it, I suspect that to many the issue is the perception that metered will be more expensive.
most water companies lose huge amounts (over 20% of water lost through leaks before reaching homes / businesses)
Need to be careful about this statistic, a year back we had a 'leak', in the vicinity of the local distribution point, some seven miles away. To fix the leak all the water in the local distribution network had to be drained away, once the leak was fixed the pipes could be refilled, flushed and repressurising the distribution network. All the water 'lost' as a result of that single leak is included in that 20% figure...
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 10:47 GMT Roland6
>"Government must act with urgency to assess the issue as quickly as possible and support the industry through any period of restricted supply."
I was tempted to write a satirical piece linking this to Brexit - UK leaving EuroCO2 panic! but the implied point is worth reflecting on:
"Very reliant on imports from Scandinavia and also the Netherlands – the UK is doubly impacted in that there are limited movements across the Channel due to the plant shutdowns in the Benelux and France limiting product to ship."
Part of the problem is the way most food-grade C02 is produced: as a by-product of ammonia production.
Gasworld notes that because ammonia's primary use is in fertilizer
So I take it from this that UK agriculture is currently highly dependent upon fertilizer production in Scandinavia and the Netherlands; just another relationship that has evolved over the last 40 years and needs to be reassessed in the context of Brexit.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 13:18 GMT Jellied Eel
So I take it from this that UK agriculture is currently highly dependent upon fertilizer production in Scandinavia and the Netherlands; just another relationship that has evolved over the last 40 years and needs to be reassessed in the context of Brexit.
I blame global warming. A long time ago, in a far away Redcar I was in a hotel with some sparkies who were working on one of the chemical plants there during it's shutdown. Turning it off and on again involved a rope tied to a large chunk of copper. Stand well back, much energy coming through..
But that was producing ammonia. Not sure if it still does, but it's a process that requires a lot of energy, both as methane for feedstock, and electricity. Which I guess is why Norway produces so much, ie cheap gas and electricity from hydro. The UK's Climate Change Act determined that energy drowned puppies, so created policies to increase energy costs. So not suprising that energy intensive businesses like chemical engineering or steel production moved out of the UK in search of lower operating costs.
But from a quick look at the process, it seems the CO2 comes from hydrogen production using methane as the feedstock. The H2 moves along into ammonia production, the CO2 ends up in beer. So any shift towards a hydrogen economy using fuel cells or direct burning would require more H2 production, so more CO2 as a byproduct.. Although the CO2 could also get used to produce synthetic fuel for ICE cars. It'd still need a lot of energy though.
TL;DR is it's more an issue of Green energy policies than Brexit.. Although Brexit would mean the UK could set it's own environmental policies, not Brussels.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 15:37 GMT Roland6
> it seems the CO2 comes from hydrogen production using methane as the feedstock.
Yes the use of methane arose because it was cheaper and more energy efficient than other ways of creating fertilizer feedstock.
Several years back, it was noted that an excellent use of wind turbines was in the production of fertilizer feedstock. Whilst the process was less energy efficient, given wind energy is 'free' energy it didn't really matter, plus there was no (fertilizer) transportation cost if the wind turbine was located on the farm.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 16:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
So any shift towards a hydrogen economy using fuel cells or direct burning would require more H2 production, so more CO2 as a byproduct..
Whilst that's quite likely if we ever have a "hydrogen economy", because steam methane reformation is the only high volume source of H2, it does defeat the objective of all the climate change shit. The official line is that if we have a hydrogen gas network, they'd use SMR to produce the H2 from natural gas, and then use carbon capture and storage to "save the world" from the CO2. There's then the problem that there's no good technologies for transporting and burning H2 in volume - the flame velocity is too fast for any currently economic burner in domestic heating equipment, the net efficiency of heating appliances will be very low, and most of the metals that we could use for the burners become brittle when exposed to hydrogen, even if you can overcome the flame velocity problem. And there's the slight problem that the tiny H2 molecules bleed out of any gap, making a gas tight network under urban roads about as likely as a truth-telling politician.
The net efficiency of the SMR conversion, the distribution losses, the combustion and heat transfer losses, and the embodied or actual energy content of CO2 capture and storage would be utterly appalling. And all to pretend that this is "zero emissions". I've been involved in some industry working groups on this, and the consensus was that compared to a conventional gas boiler, you'd need around four times as much gas input for the same heat output. And don't get me started on using "surplus renewable power" to generate H2. The same problem exists of compound inefficiencies, meaning that there's no credible affordable scenario where this can be done at volume.
Anyway, any alcohol production that requires external CO2 is clearly done by charlatans.
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Sunday 24th June 2018 12:31 GMT Jellied Eel
And don't get me started on using "surplus renewable power" to generate H2. The same problem exists of compound inefficiencies, meaning that there's no credible affordable scenario where this can be done at volume.
Problem is we have a legally binding obligation under the CCA. Unless that's repealed. So to meet self-imposed decarbonisation targets, we need to decarbonise gas.. Which sounds simple. CH4, drop the C, use hydrogen! Except as you point out, the devil is always in the details. Same with having localised plant to use the 'free' wind. Sounds fine, except a lot of chemical engineering doesn't like being interrupted when the wind drops. And then there's the costs and efficiencies. I guess for a large livestock farm, or US feedlot complex, it'd probably be easier and cheaper to make nitrates from urea the old way. And I guess for CCS as a CO2 source, there'd be additional costs to purify the CO2 and make it food grade.
Anyway, any alcohol production that requires external CO2 is clearly done by charlatans.
Indeed. But looking on the bright side, we do a cheap form of CCS on that and convert it to potentially useful fertiliser, or to help remove NOx from cars and lorries.
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Monday 25th June 2018 13:28 GMT Jellied Eel
I was under the impression that once hydrogen was established (initially from natural gas methane) it would be split from water in a nuclear reactor.
Not in a reactor, cos that's bad. In an overpressure in a pressure vessel or containment building kind of bad, which lead to one of the explosions at Fukushima.
But nuclear power stations are most efficient running at high output. So great for supplying a steady 1GW or so per reactor, 24x7x365 give or take some maintenance/refuellling. So that's where Economy 7 came in, ie creating off-peak load via electric water or storage heating as the UK went nuclear.
But thanks to Ed Milliband and John Prescott, electric heating was deemed bad and 'inefficient'. So UK households were encouraged to switch to gas central heating. And thanks to Ed, they'll need to be persuaded to switch to electric heating due to our Climate Change Act. Which means more demand for electricity, which also means less surplus energy to produce hydrogen via electrolysis. And switching away from methane reforming to create H2 would mean less CO2.
From doing a bit of reading about how CO2's produced commercially, I didn't realise how much gas/energy is required to make fertiliser.. And the consequences if the EU insists on that being decarbonised.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 07:21 GMT Dan 55
In a Rees-Mogg or Johnson interview near you:
"The government have thought of everything. The M20 will have an express beer lane built. Beer will flow freer and faster than ever before."
(Unachievable hideously expensive Brexit promise #3748194 in an ongoing series of vain attempts to make sure things stay vaguely the same as they are now.)
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Tuesday 26th June 2018 08:34 GMT MrBanana
Re: dress rehearsal
You've fallen into the trap. You say "we import" but in fact, it is "the EU import". We trade with the outside world under EU treaties. Those treaties allow for the easy importation of goods to the EU, and therefore to us. Once we are outside the EU we will not have those treaties in place and import/export, from everywhere, will become a lot more difficult. Best case is that we can renegotiate to get the same deal as we had in the EU. But we would have to do this on an individual basis with every country we trade with, and that takes time, and negotiators that we do not have. Worse case is we have to fallback to WTO tariffs - that is a very bad position to be in.
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Friday 22nd June 2018 22:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Supply and demand collaboration between compainies?
That could never happen in a free and democratic society.
Never, oh wait...
In an entirely unrelated matter I once looked up return flight prices from London Heathrow to Tokyo Narita.
Strangely Virgin and BA gave the same price, to the penny. Something like £nnn.72p.
This was after they had been cleared of colluding on price.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 15:45 GMT Roland6
Re: Supply and demand collaboration between compainies?
>Strangely Virgin and BA gave the same price, to the penny. Something like £nnn.72p.
You mean BA were offering predatory fares in an attempt to show no collusion?
Personally, when I was doing the London-Tokyo run, Virgin was my preferred choice since they were at the time the only airline to fly direct over Russia to Tokyo, everyone else (including BA) had to detour via the Middle East and Hong Kong.
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Sunday 24th June 2018 17:12 GMT Destroy All Monsters
"Pick up that can!"
No beer is one way revolutions start. Governments should be very worried.
Govnmt's are only worried if every home has an (AR-15 / AKM / H&K / VSS Vintorez) over the fireplace and they actually need to take care that it stays there. "A well-regulated militia" etc.
Britain? No worries. Sold your liberties out for a beer. Which is now unfizzy.
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Monday 25th June 2018 05:31 GMT Joe Werner
Re: I can't get over this
Beer makes its own CO_2, but this helps only if it is bottled. If you have it in a proper 50l barrel (keg?) it needs to be hooked up to a CO_2 bottle on the tap. And most beer tastes better on tap than bottled. So unless you only drink the imported[1] bottled stuff you do have a problem.
< rant >
And for me, "lager" is just a fancy name for a bad beer. Seriously, there are so many good small-ish local breweries everywhere. Germany has several, the Netherlands and Belgium even more. Hell, nowadays you can even get really nice beer from Norway (7Fjell, Lysekloster, Haandbryggeriet, Nogne, Ægir ...) to avoid the Hansa (brewed in the rain - without a roof, I guess). The "lager" stuff mentioned in the article is... blegh. Kro', and also 1667 are the same "plörre" as Carlsberg, Corona, Beck's Gold, and not really an improvement over Bud (or Miller, or Coors, ...) and don't get me started on the 'Lite' stuff, which is an abomination without any taste. Alcohol free beer[1] at decent quality is possible: The one by Ægir is really nice, the standard Munkholmen is a bit malty for my taste. Bitburger 0.0% is pretty good, then there are a ton of wheat beers (Hefeweizen), a trend started by Erdinger I believe.
</ rant>
[1] by the time it reaches the destination at your pub it is past its best. Drink local stuff!
[2] sometimes I like having those, e.g. when it is hot, after a demanding physical workout, when I'm driving, also good for those who are pregnant or still breastfeeding. I drink beer because I like it, not because I want to get drunk.
----
Monday mornign and I need one of those ---->
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Monday 25th June 2018 09:33 GMT Vinyl-Junkie
If you have it in a proper 50l barrel (keg?) it needs to be hooked up to a CO_2 bottle on the tap
That is absolute rubbish!
CAMRA has this definition: Real ale is a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide. (Emphasis mine)
Beer that is secondary fermented (which includes traditional lagers) in the barrel continues to generate enough CO2 to maintain the beer in good condition throughout the serving life of the cask (which should normally be about three to five days). The beer can be drawn direct from the barrel (gravity), via a traditional handpump/beer engine, or by electric pump (frowned upon by purists :) )
You do not (and never have) needed extraneous CO2 to dispense proper beer; brewers prior to the widescale bottling of CO2 managed to get on pretty well without it!
The lines in a traditional pub or bar were short enough to allow the drawing of beer by hand without the need for extraneous gas (yes it needed some muscle power but not much - I've worked in numerous pubs with unassisted handpumps and I'm no Hercules!). It is only modern pubs built since CO2 dispense became normal (those massive 60s estate pubs, shop conversions of the Wetherspoons type) that some pubcos have resorted to CO2 assist to dispense real ale.
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 08:06 GMT Vanir
I thought ...
that the directors and managers of these companies that use this product were paid to plan for such exigencies.
Don't they keep an eye on the future regarding such a vital component to their commercial well-being?
Don't they have a list of all the CO2 producing plants in Europe with these plants' shutdown schedules?
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Saturday 23rd June 2018 08:22 GMT Frenchie Lad
Is this Correct?
"plants often plan their maintenance shutdowns over the late spring and early summer months when fertilizer demand is lowest."
All the plants that I've ever handled plan their maximum usage of fertilizer during spring and summer so surely this is incorrect or have I misunderstood?
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Monday 25th June 2018 04:23 GMT The Oncoming Scorn
Re: Recapture
Does that explain why the beer went from tasting "normal" with a proper head on my last visit to the UK in 2011 to see my father & being as flat as Suffolk (& watery tasting) on my return a year later to arrange his funeral & being told its because you have got used to beer in Canada.
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Monday 25th June 2018 09:43 GMT Thomas Kenyon
Re: Recapture
Weirdly if the beer is flat, it's most commonly caused by scale deposits picked up in the glass from the glasswasher.
Beer recipies have continuallyt changed over the years (eg. since 2011, the strength of a lot of them have gone down and some have been reformulated to used a mixed gas instead of pure CO2).
To prevent the most common cause of flat beer, the glass washer needs to be regularly cleaned, a water softener needs to be fitted which needs regenerating or regular maintenance (depending on type), especially in hard water areas.
(It doesn't help the weird idea that a lot of bar staff have, that if you want a pint to be fizzy, they need to beat all the gas out of it whilst they're pouring it).
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Sunday 24th June 2018 18:07 GMT Tom Paine
Re: Gas shortage
Had to read 95% of the comments before someone pointed this out! You /can/ hand-pull from the keg to the glass, but if the beer's literally down in a cellar, it's (a) slow and (b) very tiring work. (Although -- as modern kids today seem to go to the gym twice a day, perhaps that's not an issue these days?)
The Boat Inn at Redbrook had the right idea - the barrels and kegs were behind and above the bar.
* type type
just about visible to the right of this pic http://www.theboatpenallt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pic34.jpeg
(yeah, that's me after a hard day down the data cetre, right there)
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Monday 25th June 2018 09:13 GMT Paul Shirley
Re: Gas shortage
I remember finally enticing some of the older local CAMRA members into out favourite continental bar 20+ years ago and watching the idiots have a meltdown over CO2 bottles on the real ale lines. Some of them self professed experts but clueless about pumps. Couple of the current crop needed it explaining at the weekend, they weren't claiming expertise though.
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Sunday 24th June 2018 05:45 GMT Spiz
Oh two or zero two?
“Part of the problem is the way most food-grade C02 is produced: as a by-product of ammonia production.”
Any reason why a zero was used in this paragraph? Maybe someone can’t handle their real ale...
Yes yes, I know there’s a tips and corrections link, but it just seemed a bizarre mistake. It’s got to be quite difficult to type this incorrectly and wondered if anyone else had noticed.
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Monday 25th June 2018 05:33 GMT Ozzard
It's hitting the biosciences too - and perhaps medicine
We've had a warning round that dry ice is scarce and may not be available when needed. Samples that need to be kept frozen in transit are usually shuttled round in an expanded polystyrene container under dry ice, so this has the potential to limit movement of tissue and plasma/serum samples at least.
(Pint of mild, please)
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Monday 25th June 2018 08:42 GMT Dodgy Geezer
Perhaps someone can help me with this.....
...Part of the problem is the way most food-grade CO2 is produced: as a by-product of ammonia production....
When I was at school, ammonia (NH3) was made by fixing the nitorogen from the air using the Haber Process. N2 + 3H2 => 2NH3 (200atm pressure, catalyst hot iron). I can't see any CO2 there at all.
Hydrogen was typically made using Lowes process. H2O + C => CO + H2 (high pressure steam run over hot coal). The CO can be further reacted CO +H2O => CO2 +H2. Perhaps that's where the CO2 is coming from?
It may be associated with ammonia production, but I wouldn't really call that a by-product of ammonia production. More a by-product of a percursor - hydrogen.
Unless, of course, they have a new process nowadays....
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Monday 25th June 2018 22:37 GMT Jan 0
Re: Perhaps someone can help me with this.....
Well, when you and I were at school, most CO2 was obtained from breweries. But then Grotneys cornered the CO2 market and injected it all into a strange device called a Red Barrel. It's not too big a leap from there to the current sorry state. Thankfully, many sensible people have remembered how to make ales and lagers without all this nonsense.
My next pint's a Billericay Vanilla Mild please.
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Monday 25th June 2018 18:22 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Coca-Cola pauses production at some plants
CO2 shortage: Coca-Cola pauses production at some plants
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44606777
Make mine a Rum
and Coca Cola
Biting the hand that feeds IT
