How much ice should you add to the keg when carbonating?

• EW

  Evan Wallace Staff member

  11/29/24, 1:04 PM

  How much ice should you add to the keg when carbonating? Does more ice lead to more dilution? And can you predict the amount of dilution from the ice?

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• EW

  Evan Wallace Staff member

  11/29/24, 1:13 PM

  It turns out that that the amount of dilution you get from the ice depends very little on how much ice you use. That's why the amount of ice you use isn't very important--you don't need to measure it. All that matters is that you use enough ice to get the entire batch down below 32 F. As long as you add enough ice to get the entire batch down to freezing (which generally only takes about 15-30 seconds of aggitation), and you still have some ice left in the keg that hasn't melted, you will get approximately 30% dilution; i.e., if you start with 10 liters of liquid ingredients in your recipe, you will end up with about 13 liters of cocktail.

  Interestingly, the more ice you use, and the colder the ice is, the LESS dilution you will get. This is because if there is a lot of ice remaining after aggitation, the remaining ice can freeze water out of solution, actually concentrating the remaining batch slightly.

  You can experiment around with our ABV and dilution calculator here:

  https://appliedfizzics.com/pages/ice-melt-dilution-calculator

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