kegging elitism

No, not the people who say kegging is SOOO much easier than bottling. I have encountered a new form of elitist. In the last sixth months I have had two seperate people knock my beers as tasting bottle conditioned. One was a blonde ale with an off flavor (something with the fermenter I believe) that a guy said was cidery from priming with corn sugar.

The second was last weekend. I took some Oktoberfest to the new lhbs because I know the owner. It was my first all grain batch and it was a little light on the maltiness. So 4 people are tasting it and one asks me how old it is. I inform him it has only been in the bottle 3 weeks so it might be a tad green (I don't think it was) and he says "ah, that's what I am tasting, this is a bottle conditioned beer!" It was not a flattering tone either.

So I throw myself onto the wisdom of hbt. Is there actually a taste one could pick up on bottled beer that is not desirable and isn't found in kegged beer? Or are these guys taking keg snob to new levels?

Disclaimer: I totally want to start kegging and don't want to sound like I am against it.

Some of the most expensive beers in the world are bottle condition. Such as Chimay

Not just most expensive but best beers in the world, st bernadus abt 12. It does get kegged as well but I've only ever had from a bottle and its damn delicious.

I thought corn sugar didnt impart any flavors. Isn't it table sugar that is supposed to leave the cider taste?

I, personally, can taste a difference. Or maybe not taste it so much as feel it. I find it highly unlikely that all the sugar you use to prime gets eaten by the yeast, so there has to be some change to the profile of the beer, no matter how slight. Of course, I think it is more pronounced with lighter and/or hop-forward beer.

I bottle and keg, my malt-forward beers always taste best out of a bottle, like stouts and porters, etc. I prefer my IPA's to be kegged.

YMMV, everyone is different, this is just my opinion.

I've been thinking about this and sorry for slight thread derail, but is there yeast sediment when you keg? What about when bottling from a keg? Do you have to cold crash to not get sediment, or does that only come when you bottle condition, from the activity of yeast eating the priming sugar?

I suspect the people criticizing your beers were idiots. Bottle conditioning itself wouldn't cause cider-like flavors; you just aren't using enough corn sugar in priming to do that. It may be that the bottle had a mild infection, but that isn't an indictment of bottle conditioning itself. As for your Oktoberfest, it sounds like the guy just wanted to say something critical, but wasn't educated enough about the style or subtle, malt-forward beers in general to make a constructive criticism. He wasn't tasting anything; he just wanted to hear his own voice.

As some commenters above have noted, some of the world's best beer is bottle conditioned. I prefer to keg simply because I don't have the patience for bottling, and my wife doesn't like having all the bottles around. Plus I use a nitrogen-CO2 blend to serve my beer, which does impact the product in a way that I really like. It is simply a personal preference.

To bzwyatt: yes, there is sediment when you keg. Cold crashing will reduce that, of course. You shouldn't get much sediment if you bottle from the keg, but over time there will be a little. The only way to completely eliminate that is to filter your beer.

I have never noticed cidery flavors from bottling. The < 5 oz of sugar is not enough to be noticeable in a batch. The only flavors I have noticed that are contributed by bottling would be due to stirring up more yeast due to transporting.

As for kegs, you can get off flavors from them as well.

I keg for convenience. It is far easier for me to clean and sanitize one keg and the autosiphon than it is to do 2 cases of bottles, a bottling bucket, the bottling wand, autosiphon, tubing, caps...

Sound like to me that you have faults in your beer and people are incorrectly attributing them to style.

I would take the LHBS owner's opinion with a grain of salt; what makes him an expert on beer? He may be, but the qualification of him being a LHBS owner doesn't necessarily do so.

This is like going to an owner of a appliance store and asking their opinion on your souffle.

Until you get really good at either method, I'm sure there will be imperfections that would be noticed. They might be used to imperfections in bottling due to their own experiences.

I was an amateur at bottling before switching to kegging. Now I'm an amateur at that, but I can tell you that my beer is much better now.
As long as you are half-way decent at kegging, the process is pretty forgiving (at least in my experience). When bottling, I would use use the wrong amounts of sugar and other mistakes that made my beer too carbed or too flat, there was always residue in the bottles, and lots of other issues. My kegged beer has been clear and tasty and carbed exactly the way I want it or I could adjust it.
I am so glad to be done with bottling.

i never carb beer in a bottle. every time i do, i end up with a beer i don't enjoy. must be something to do with the dextrose or something. what i do now is bottle all my beers from the keg. If i'm going to bottle! i enjoy those beers just as much as the kegged beer.

I'm starting to enjoy bottling as part of the process. I get to sit in a comfortable position with everything within arms reach. The super agata bench capper,along with the bottle tree & vinator speed things up on bottling day. And unlike all the yuppies in my developement,I can honestly say I have 3 Farrari's!!
And I agree that cidery flavor sure as hell is not coming from a few ounces of priming sugar,no matter which is used. Cidery flavor would be from too much sugar in the recipe,ferment temps too. Then not giving it enough time to clean up in primary.
Don't ya just love noobie beer snobs?!

broadbill said:

Sound like to me that you have faults in your beer and people are incorrectly attributing them to style.

I would take the LHBS owner's opinion with a grain of salt; what makes him an expert on beer? He may be, but the qualification of him being a LHBS owner doesn't necessarily do so.

This is like going to an owner of a appliance store and asking their opinion on your souffle.

Click to expand...

I value his opinion because he has a good palate. He was not the person who said the beer was bottle conditioned.

JDGator said:

i never carb beer in a bottle. every time i do, i end up with a beer i don't enjoy. must be something to do with the dextrose or something. what i do now is bottle all my beers from the keg. If i'm going to bottle! i enjoy those beers just as much as the kegged beer.

Click to expand...

What about the bottled beer don't you enjoy? I am very curious because I have had lots of beer both ways and have never been able to tell the difference. Is there an off flavor or something you get only from bottling?

kaconga said:

What about the bottled beer don't you enjoy? I am very curious because I have had lots of beer both ways and have never been able to tell the difference. Is there an off flavor or something you get only from bottling?

Click to expand...

On a properly cleaned/sanitized & capped beer,no. not that I for one have ever heard of. I think it's another one of those imaginary boogiemen...

kaconga said:

What about the bottled beer don't you enjoy? I am very curious because I have had lots of beer both ways and have never been able to tell the difference. Is there an off flavor or something you get only from bottling?

Click to expand...

i can't really put my finger on it to be honest. it just seems to not be a crisp and clean. i have a hard time explaining it. if i bottle from the keg i have no issues.

If you drive your bottle conditioned beer to the lhbs, the sediment will get into the beer. If you have a lot of sludge this changes the flavor considerably. There are bottle conditioned commercial beers where you barely see anything in the bottom of the bottle.

To the original poster , I work in a Lhbs in MA and some people are just dickheads about beer and brewing. I say some beer park well with kegging some better with bottles but to each his own as Lon as it tastes good to YOU the brewer

broadbill said:

Sound like to me that you have faults in your beer and people are incorrectly attributing them to style.

I would take the LHBS owner's opinion with a grain of salt; what makes him an expert on beer? He may be, but the qualification of him being a LHBS owner doesn't necessarily do so.

This is like going to an owner of a appliance store and asking their opinion on your souffle.

Click to expand...

+1 on this

Sometimes people taste off flavors in beer, and then start grasping for explanations as to why they might be there. Believing that bottle conditioning causes flavor changes is just one, another is "extract twang". Ive gotten judging scoresheets where they attributed flavors to things that weren't even part of my process.

Some people have enough experience to be helpful, while others may leap to simple explanations that may be fallacies only because they lack enough experience, or, in the worst case, are just mentally lazy.

kaconga said:

I value his opinion because he has a good palate. He was not the person who said the beer was bottle conditioned.

Click to expand...

I know a couple of judges that work together at the LHBS, and I trust their palates. To be honest, I am always iffy about my beers, and am hoping for a compliment. When/if they tell me something is "off", I take it to heart, and do my best to not do "that" again. I have entered 1 contest and I got smeared due to noob mistakes. Once again, that's okay. My best/worst judge is SHMBO, and I value her opinion also. I have a Taddy Porter clone that has only been in the bottle for 14-15 days. Knowing that this beer is still green, my loving Wife said, "This is going to be amazing, you should enter a contest with this." Sweeter words have never been said before, I really love my wife!

I judged a competition a few months ago and was paired with a non-BJCP judge. He kept taking his flashlight to the bottom of the bottle for each entry and either loudly proclaimed "Bottle Conditioned" or "Kegged". I could tell from his tone that he had some kind of weird bias against bottle conditioned beer. I asked him what his point was and he didn't really have one. There is certainly some elitism with kegging, but as others have said in this thread some of the most expensive beer in the world is bottled conditioned.

I switched to kegging because I hate cleaning/storing bottles, but I don't think bottling is inferior in any way. I've had great beer both ways. I do think there is a slight difference in taste... not better or worse, just different. I think it's a difference in the naturally produced CO2 vs force carbed from a tank.

hercher said:

I suspect the people criticizing your beers were idiots.

Click to expand...

Thought that was worth quoting again

Darwin18 said:

I judged a competition a few months ago and was paired with a non-BJCP judge. He kept taking his flashlight to the bottom of the bottle for each entry and either loudly proclaimed "Bottle Conditioned" or "Kegged". I could tell from his tone that he had some kind of weird bias against bottle conditioned beer. I asked him what his point was and he didn't really have one. There is certainly some elitism with kegging, but as others have said in this thread some of the most expensive beer in the world is bottled conditioned.

Click to expand...

As a bottle-conditioner and comp submitter, i find this comment concerning.

Visual Clues have a ton to do with our perception of taste. Some people just can't get over that and no matter what, they aren't going to taste what you are serving them, without thinking, "Bottle Conditioned."

The local brewpub I frequent brews a specialty beer every month. If you belong to the club, you get to come to the tapping and do a tasting that night and then you are given a bomber of that beer to take home and enjoy at a later time. At the brewpub, the beer is served from serving tanks on tap. The beer you take home is bottle conditioned. I took a growler home one night with me as well, just to do a side by side. Honestly, the only difference I noticed was the the bottle conditioned one had a higher carb level. Obviously this could be from losing CO2 in the growler fill, over carbing the bottle, etc.

Other than that though, there was no real flavor difference in the beer. Especially when you let the two sit for a bit, to bubble off a little more CO2.

I guess I just wonder, I know, lot of typing to get to this simple question, if you told your friends you just got a kegging system, left the room and poured a bottle into a glass and served it without showing them the bottle, if they would still make that comment?

If people are tasting a difference, I suspect the most likely culprit is not pouring carefully; there are dregs in bottle-conditioned beer that aren't present when beer is kegged. CO2 is CO2, though.

The only time I'd worry about sediment in a bottle conditioned beer is if I saw too much of it. And then I'd only worry that I should hold it over the sink while opening. (Plus sometimes I get a nasty bite from overcarbed beers)

kaconga said:

No, not the people who say kegging is SOOO much easier than bottling. I have encountered a new form of elitist. In the last sixth months I have had two seperate people knock my beers as tasting bottle conditioned. One was a blonde ale with an off flavor (something with the fermenter I believe) that a guy said was cidery from priming with corn sugar. The second was last weekend. I took some Oktoberfest to the new lhbs because I know the owner. It was my first all grain batch and it was a little light on the maltiness. So 4 people are tasting it and one asks me how old it is. I inform him it has only been in the bottle 3 weeks so it might be a tad green (I don't think it was) and he says "ah, that's what I am tasting, this is a bottle conditioned beer!" It was not a flattering tone either. So I throw myself onto the wisdom of hbt. Is there actually a taste one could pick up on bottled beer that is not desirable and isn't found in kegged beer? Or are these guys taking keg snob to new levels? Disclaimer: I totally want to start kegging and don't want to sound like I am against it.

Click to expand...

I keg condition all my beers and as a rule get a much better overall carb. I shortened all the tubes in my kegs about 1/2" and added filters to the ends to avoid picking up any sediment. Haven't had any complaints.

Malty_Dog said:

Thought that was worth quoting again

Click to expand...

I would love to see the keg snobs in a double blind taste test of kegged vs bottled beers.

I have both bottle conditioned and kegged beers and can't tell any real difference, except, when drinking a freshly keg carbonated brew. When kegging, the rapid injection of CO2 into the beer will change the beer's PH for a few days until things "settle down" again, other than that some people just like to hear themselves talk. As long as the beer you brew tastes good to you...that's all that really matters. That and a supportive spouse doesn't hurt either!

You should go back and hand him some instructions on how to properly pour a bottle of HB into a glass. That'll learn him.

If bottling is an inferior method of serving and storing beer then there are a **** ton of craft breweries out there that are inferior. I feel like the comments are those made by the same people who overuse the term "sessionable."

As much as I'd like to keg, I want it out of convenience, not some superior thought process that my beer will be better.

I still say this all goes back to their perception of the "cool crowd" that brews all grain & kegs their beer. you ain't shizz & brew chinese toilet water if you don't. And you call those dinosaur farts aroma?! Then they somehow have to logistize the hundreds of dollars spent on kegging & AG equipment with this sort of drivel. It seems to be the point of diminishing returns when they start looking down their noses at bottlers,PM'rs,extract brewers & the like. Everybody wants to be better than somebody. Especially around this developement.

Isn't it table sugar that is supposed to leave the cider taste?

Click to expand...

Only if you are adding it at 20+% of your total fermentables.

kaconga said:

No, not the people who say kegging is SOOO much easier than bottling. I have encountered a new form of elitist. In the last sixth months I have had two seperate people knock my beers as tasting bottle conditioned. One was a blonde ale with an off flavor (something with the fermenter I believe) that a guy said was cidery from priming with corn sugar.

The second was last weekend. I took some Oktoberfest to the new lhbs because I know the owner. It was my first all grain batch and it was a little light on the maltiness. So 4 people are tasting it and one asks me how old it is. I inform him it has only been in the bottle 3 weeks so it might be a tad green (I don't think it was) and he says "ah, that's what I am tasting, this is a bottle conditioned beer!" It was not a flattering tone either.

So I throw myself onto the wisdom of hbt. Is there actually a taste one could pick up on bottled beer that is not desirable and isn't found in kegged beer? Or are these guys taking keg snob to new levels?

Disclaimer: I totally want to start kegging and don't want to sound like I am against it.

Click to expand...

I have to say, I am surprised you could understand what they were saying with how far up their a$$es their heads much have been.

I keg because, well, I'm a lazy SOB and bottling just takes too long and requires precious real estate for all the bottles. That being said, I actually prefer bottle aged homebrew over kegged. Kegged beer may look prettier, but it seems to be lacking certain qualities that are present in the bottles (at least with my beer). I find that my bottle aged beers tend to be more refined and closer to the profile I was aiming for than my kegged stuff. I really am my own worst critic, but if you were to put one of my bottle aged beers and my kegged beer in front of me I could tell you which was which pretty easily. I'll usually make a session beer for the keg and have a serious beer in the bottles.

Meh. Bottling sucks. Kegging sucks. The cool kids are all packaging their beers in the bags out of boxed wine. Sheesh. Get it together all!

DrunkleJon said:

Meh. Bottling sucks. Kegging sucks. The cool kids are all packaging their beers in the bags out of boxed wine. Sheesh. Get it together all!

Click to expand...

I just drink mine straight out of the primary with a curly straw. Much less hassle.

Darwin18 said:

I judged a competition a few months ago and was paired with a non-BJCP judge. He kept taking his flashlight to the bottom of the bottle for each entry and either loudly proclaimed "Bottle Conditioned" or "Kegged". I could tell from his tone that he had some kind of weird bias against bottle conditioned beer. I asked him what his point was and he didn't really have one. There is certainly some elitism with kegging, but as others have said in this thread some of the most expensive beer in the world is bottled conditioned.

Click to expand...

Do you remember how your scores compared to his and if there was a constant lower score from him for the "inferrior" beer?

unionrdr said:

I still say this all goes back to their perception of the "cool crowd" that brews all grain & kegs their beer. you ain't shizz & brew chinese toilet water if you don't. And you call those dinosaur farts aroma?! Then they somehow have to logistize the hundreds of dollars spent on kegging & AG equipment with this sort of drivel. It seems to be the point of diminishing returns when they start looking down their noses at bottlers,PM'rs,extract brewers & the like. Everybody wants to be better than somebody. Especially around this developement.

Click to expand...

Sweet I am finally in with the cool kids... only took 29 years too! I agree with all those that have said the guy sounds like he just wants to be better than the OP, my reasoning is if he truely suspected/knew that bottle conditioning was the reason for the issues he had with the beer he would of gone on to explain himself and offer a solution to the "problem" - not just a brushoff "this beer ain't good enough for me because its bottle conditioned".

hunter_la5 said:

I just drink mine straight out of the primary with a curly straw. Much less hassle.

Click to expand...

Well actually (couldn't resist) you could do that with close-system pressurised fermentation