Belgian - Bottle vs Keg

I brewed a Belgian dark strong (westvleteren 12 clone). It's been bulk aging in a secondary (corny keg) for about the past 8 weeks after an 8 week aging at 50F.

So my question.....I now have a full kegging setup and I would much rather keg it and serve it as all i would need to do at this point is hook it up to carb it. I realize that this is frowned upon with Belgians but I'm sick of bottling. Anyone have any thoughts? What flavor does bottling provide to a belgian that is lost with kegging?

I thought I might try bottling half of it and force carbing the other half to compare side by side. This is obviously more work but would make the bottling work a fun experiment.

I keg my Belgians. I like being able to just pull a pint.

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

I keg my Belgians. I like being able to just pull a pint.

Click to expand...

Do you notice any taste difference between ones that you have bottled in the past or other bottled belgians? I know people talk about how they should be bottled but not sure what flavor it provides.

Not really any flavor diff. I think it's more aesthetics. That and it's easier to store a bottle for years.

I do the same with my belgian styled homebrews as any other, keg it and bottle off what is left at some point with the CPBF.

Advantages to the keg are that it is much easier to dial in a nice high carbonation and you don't need to worry about having heavy bottles.

I will say that I find with commercial Belgian beers is that I find some of the lighter colored ones (tripples, strong golden, saison) are better in kegs and the darker ones are better in bottles. I can't explain it and it may have nothing to do with what would happen in a homebrew setting but it is what I have observed.

Thanks for the tips. It's already at 40F in the keezer and has been for a few days. I'll throw a CO2 line on it tonight and start carbing it up. Like remillard mentioned I can always bottle a few when the keg is getting low and store them to taste them aged. Although they will be force carbed rather than priming sugar carbed I would like to see the effects of long aging.

Ahhhh..... kegging is so much more simple and streamlined.