Post #770249 by AceExplorer on Mon, Nov 14, 2016 7:29 AM

On 2016-11-12 07:04, tikiskip wrote:
"My vermouths are always put back on the shelf with a squirt of nitrogen to purge oxidants and then refrigerated"

So Ace where do you get the nitrogen?
What does it look like, a small can?

Think I could use that.

Skip, I bought a can of nitrogen at Total Wine. It's $10 a can, and should last me quite a while. The problem is that the can is quite large, so I'm working on a different solution with a device which is smaller. Pictures are below.

Basically, I'm going to use food-grade CO2 with a small hand-held bike tire inflator with a trigger. Then I'll make a special home-made nozzle to inject gas into my bottles.

The bike inflator costs $15 at Wal-Mart and comes with one 16g unthreaded CO2 cartridge. It has a nice finger trigger, perfect for bar use. Then I can get 30 16g unthreaded CO2 cartridges on eBay for about $35.

The nozzle will be made from a plastic adapter (2-pk is 97 cents at Wal-Mart) and I'll glue a tube from the nitrogen can into the adapter. I'll post a photo later when I've got this made, I just bought all this stuff day before yesterday, so I haven't got it built yet.

Yes, this whole setup is damn expensive. But I have four different vermouths that I want to preserve, so the benefit is worth the effort and money for the convenience of not having bottles of vermouth go bad, and for sharing with others here on TC. If this turns out to work great, then I may create a new thread as a "bar hack" for those who have pesky spirits which may go bad when exposed to air inside the bottle.

Here are the pics. Hope this helps you and others.

The can I bought at Total Wine. This works fine if you don't mind the size of the can:

This is much smaller and MUCH sexier to whip out at your bar:

This is how you get your cost down - buy on eBay in small or large quantities: