Kegging vs. Bottling

A forum to discuss the various ways of getting beer into your glass.
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Wonkydonkey
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Wonkydonkey » Mon Dec 19, 2016 10:42 pm

gobuchul wrote:Kegs only for me.

Well worth the initial expense.

Regarding cleaning I simply leave the empty kegs sealed until the next brew day, then a scoop of oxy in each one and fill with the warm water from my wort chiller, leave to soak for a while then rinse by filling with more chiller water. Works very well for me. I do have quite a few kegs though.

If you have the space then a small chest freezer is really useful.

Yeh, I do the same, clean empty cornies on brew day or if I have 3 or 4 to clean then any spare hr as it takes not much more time or effort to clean 3 or 4 but is better if you've just brewed and have hot water from the Ic.

And a fridge, well most fridges can take 2 cornies, where as a freezer can take more kegs 8) I never really have more than two kegs on, but ready chilled kegs are great when one has just kicked... :lol:
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Wonkydonkey » Mon Dec 19, 2016 10:42 pm

Arr dibble post,,,
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Wonkydonkey » Mon Dec 19, 2016 10:56 pm

aamcle wrote:I bottle most of my brews, I have a Corny it's been a pig with leaking gas and contaminations but I think I got it right on the last batch so that is nice.

Unless you have a lot of kegs you will have limited choice of drinks available whereas bottling offers more choice, the only big plus for kegs is the ability to force carbonate and get beer without sediment.


ATB. aamcle

Yeh licking gas , is a pain.... But be careful and tune the gas off each night. :wink: or sort your lines out, stop-um flexing at the JG fittings... :o and new seals on the kegs really does do the job... #-o
Get a pegas counter pressure filler and your in the bottle filling domain for parties or friends, but it's more dosh and adds time when you. Could have filled those bottles in the first place.....you really have just gotta get ya head around,,,do I or do I not want to buy bottled beer from the supermarket....and have kegs at home.

Anyhow the choices is yours, ...I've gone kegging :lol: :lol: 8) 8) 8)
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by dbambrick996 » Tue Dec 20, 2016 9:09 am

Just started kegging myself and will never go back to bottling. Open the fermenter and transfer to keg, it is so handy the first time I did it I wondered to myself why I put it off for so long.

Got a growler as well so I can fill that when I need to, kegging is just so much easier.

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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Barley Water » Wed Dec 21, 2016 7:44 pm

I have been doing this hobby over 30 years and I would have quit long ago if I had to bottle all my beer. I have a three tap keezer in the house, a freezer and a frig both with temperature control in the garage. I use the freezer for lagering and the frig for fermentation. I always have three different beers in the keezer which is how I get around the issue of having to drink the same beer all the time. I have six 5 gallon kegs and two 3 gallon kegs and besides the 3 kegs in the keezer I try to keep three full and lagering so that should I float a keg in the keezer I can quickly replace it. I use the two 3 gallon kegs to manage my stock (when a 5 gallon kegs gets around 1/2 empty I frequently jump the rest of the beer into the 3 gallon keg to free up more space). Generally speaking I try to keep relatively less potent beer in the keezer as I have found it easy to get "over served' if I have the high octane stuff on tap. I tend to bottle the big beers, sours (which I don't like to put into my tap system) or Belgian beers where I use corked bottles and naturally carbonate.

In my view, the advantages of kegging are:
much, much easier to clean one keg as versus a bunch of bottles
allows filling bottles for competitions or whatever under pressure avoiding the sediment of natural carbonation
drinking from a tap system just looks cool and gives off the "right" vibe to folks visiting
allows me to mess with the carbonation easily
you can take a flat beer and carbonate it really quickly (as versus 2 weeks for natural carbonation)
is a natural if you make lagers as you can use kegs as a bright tanks
finally (although I don't do this myself) if you filter you really need the beer in kegs

I accumulated all this stuff over many years but certainly if you bought it all at once the investment would be sizable. I will however refrain from putting a price on it as this is a public forum and on the off chance that my wife sees this post, at least I can still maintain a certain amount of plausable deniability. :D
Drinking:Saison (in bottles), Belgian Dubbel (in bottles), Oud Bruin (in bottles), Olde Ale (in bottles),
Abbey Triple (in bottles), Munich Helles, Best Bitter (TT Landlord clone), English IPA
Conditioning: Traditional bock bier, CAP
Fermenting: Munich Dunkel
Next up: Bitter (London Pride like), ESB
So many beers to make, so little time (and cold storage space)

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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Wezzel » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:07 pm

I once heard someone say that when they die they hope the wife doesn't sell their equipment for what they told her they paid for it


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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by 6470zzy » Mon Jan 02, 2017 5:28 pm

Nitro Jim wrote: more importantly I am not that keen of force carbonated ale!
Then you could always let it naturally carbonate in the keg with some priming sugar, which is what I generally do.

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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by Nitro Jim » Tue Jan 03, 2017 7:53 am

6470zzy wrote:
Nitro Jim wrote: more importantly I am not that keen of force carbonated ale!
Then you could always let it naturally carbonate in the keg with some priming sugar, which is what I generally do.

Cheers
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by 6470zzy » Wed Jan 04, 2017 9:53 pm

Nitro Jim wrote:
6470zzy wrote:
Nitro Jim wrote: more importantly I am not that keen of force carbonated ale!
Then you could always let it naturally carbonate in the keg with some priming sugar, which is what I generally do.

Cheers
I do this already...
Well that's sorted then :mrgreen:
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Re: Kegging vs. Bottling

Post by davew » Thu Feb 02, 2017 9:16 am

A good midway solution is mini kegs with a party star deluxe tap, you can also get the fittings to connect to a proper beer tap and co2 supply.

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