PSA: Responding to bottling issues with "you should keg"

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homebrewdad

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This is perhaps my very biggest pet peeve here on HBT.

Some guy will post a question about bottling, or relate a issue he has had. Within half a dozen posts, some enlightened genius/comedic mastermind will respond with a comment along the following lines: "if you really want to fix your bottling problems, keg your beer! Hurr hurr hurr."

I'm not talking about those who advocate kegging in a "this versus that" type of discussion, nor am I bashing those who may bring it up in other appropriate situations.

No, I'm talking about the so and sos that seem to believe that they are somehow superior because they keg, and seem to gain some perverse joy out of annoyingly interjecting themselves into bottling discussions.

Some people bottle because it is more convenient for sharing or trading. Some bottle because they don't own kegging equipment, and may not want to invest in it now/ever. Some may just enjoy bottling.

Forums, and real life, would be better if folks would follow Wheaton's Law. If you aren't familiar with it, look it up.


Now, go ahead and flame me, keggers. :rockin:
 
I agree. I havn't posted any new threads here on HBT about bottling because (thus far) I have found solutions to my questions already on here. I may have found these answers a little more quickly if I hadn't had to scroll through all the "You should just keg :p" in every thread.

I enjoy bottling because it's easy to share, it's cheap, and my current living situation/income doesn't allow kegging. Even if I did keg, I would still bottle half my batches.
 
Its okay to be a dick on TV, so I would imagine the internet qualifies as well.
I would add that I get sick of whiny people too.
 
ever try to smash a keg on a bar top so you could menacingly wield the razor sharp remnants, telling everyone in the room that you'll cut them from skull to scrotum if they don't stop bitching about you playing a threepeat of europe's "the final countdown" on the jukebox???
it works much better with a bottle.
i hear you homebrewdad. "you should keg" is a pretty crappy answer...
 
Now, go ahead and flame me, keggers. :rockin:

I am on your side.

We should always answer the question first, then we may make recommendations and explain why.

One of this days I need to ask a question too and I am sure I will receive a lot of questions without answers.


Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
If you kegged, you wouldn't have this problem...:mug:

Heh. I expected a flood of these - in this thread, that's funny.

Just go ahead and get it out of your system here, and the next time somebody has troble with a capper/bottling wand/dip tube/etc, try to resist the urge.
 
Another issue with this forum "You should search more"

Sometimes, yes but a lot of times actually no. Certain subjects have been talked about and the information stays current but there is a lot of subjects that continue to change and searching these forums does not solve the problem or answer the question. If all your going to say is "Search harder" gtfo and don't respond. kthx
 
Another issue with this forum "You should search more"

Sometimes, yes but a lot of times actually no. Certain subjects have been talked about and the information stays current but there is a lot of subjects that continue to change and searching these forums does not solve the problem or answer the question. If all your going to say is "Search harder" gtfo and don't respond. kthx

If nothing else, this applies to the beginner forum.
 
Kegging isn't about being elite, it's about being evolved.
It is the all grain to bottling's extract.

Ignoring the question of how valid your assertation is, I don't see the threads where all grain guys jump into extract threads and give advice like "if you'd go to all grain, you wouldn't have that problem."

Maybe that's because AG is more complicated, I dunno.

I have no problem with you encouraging kegging, but the original point of this thread remains valid - jumping into a thread where someone is wanting bottling help with "kegging fixes that problem" is jerkface behavior. It doesn't make you look cool, smart, or evolved. It does, however, make you look like an ass.
 
Bottling is awesome. Easy to share, cheap etc. etc...plus, I just like the process. I usually have a friend or two who don't mind helping since I offer some homebrew while we do it. Put on some music, have a good time, bottle with your friends. I've done it alone as well, and while it can be a little stressful the first time, it gets easier.

Plus, some beers just really have to be bottle conditioned in my opinion. Saison, Biere de Garde, etc. Although some people will probably disagree with me on that one...
 
Bottling is awesome. Easy to share, cheap etc. etc...plus, I just like the process. I usually have a friend or two who don't mind helping since I offer some homebrew while we do it. Put on some music, have a good time, bottle with your friends. I've done it alone as well, and while it can be a little stressful the first time, it gets easier.

Plus, some beers just really have to be bottle conditioned in my opinion. Saison, Biere de Garde, etc. Although some people will probably disagree with me on that one...

I agree with you. I enjoy bottling itself. Sanitizing and prepping ahead of time? Not so much. But bottling, capping, labelling... feels like completion of the process.
 
I agree with you. I enjoy bottling itself. Sanitizing and prepping ahead of time? Not so much. But bottling, capping, labelling... feels like completion of the process.
I get the same feeling when I seal up a keg. Then I get an extra hour to drink beer.:ban:
 
If someone is looking for help in fixing a bottling issue or problem, I'm not one to give kegging as a solution.

That being said, for me as a serious winemaker, I have enough bottling drama and sanitizing and storage and all that goes along with it that I appreciate the simple sophistication of kegging.

So I'm not an anti-bottling type, but I simple will not take on two hobbies at these levels if they both have to be bottled.
 
Kegging isn't about being elite, it's about being evolved.
It is the all grain to bottling's extract.

So a bottle one day woke up and thought I could be more, then 2 thousand years later, after many natural selections, and additive mutations, we ended up with a keg. This bit of origin is as exciting as a birthday.

It begs to question, what came first the bottle or the keg.

So are you under-evolved until you actually start casking and doing real beer?

Wait though If they had large containers thousands of years ago, maybe even wood ones that were "kegs", doesn't that point to a de-evolution.
 
Do all home brewers who start out bottling stay bottling, or do they eventually move on to kegging all or at least part of their production?

I'm actually curious, since I see no practical appeal to bottling for myself, the storage, the labor, the collecting, cleaning, etc. if I had a bottling line and was using all new glass that's a different convo entirely.

Kegging is like bottling except you're only taking care of one large bottle instead many small ones.

I've never had issues with portability with kegging, I can fill a growler as easy as the brewpub can.

One of the apparent issues with bottling, evidenced by the endless threads is the issues around cleaning all those containers, managing consistency from one to the other for priming and problems associated with the process of each. Kegging holds a lot of appeal as an alternative because it mitigates many of these problems by going to a single serving vessel which gives easier and more consistent control over that aspect.

My armchair observation has been that, many former bottlers who have moved on to kegging don't miss the inconsistency or labor of the former and see the kegging as a form of evolution.... Ie. I don't see a lot of keggers lamenting their situation and looking to go back to strictly bottling.
 
I get the same feeling when I seal up a keg. Then I get an extra hour to drink beer.:ban:

You don't drink beer while you are bottling? :drunk:

I keg most of my beer now but I still bottle a few. Like the beer I make for my girlfriend. I don't drink very many of them and it takes her a couple months to drink the rest. I don't want precious space tied up in my keggerator with that. :fro:
 
My armchair observation has been that, many former bottlers who have moved on to kegging don't miss the inconsistency or labor of the former and see the kegging as a form of evolution.... Ie. I don't see a lot of keggers lamenting their situation and looking to go back to strictly bottling.

Kegs have benefits, but also have their own completely different set of problems.
cleaning, tanks, regulators, hoses, gaskets, o-rings, poppets, manifolds, staining, rust, (wait SS doesn't rust, feric oxide), faucet cleaning, faucet troubleshooting and maintenance , line foaming.

discussed openly amongst keggers, but double secret when bottlers are present.:D

i think throwing 5 cornies in the trunk of my car for 4th of July is easier than the same amount of bottles, but day to day, bottles are less hassle.
 
Kegs have benefits, but also have their own completely different set of problems.
cleaning, tanks, regulators, hoses, gaskets, o-rings, poppets, manifolds, staining, rust, (wait SS doesn't rust, feric oxide), faucet cleaning, faucet troubleshooting and maintenance , line foaming.

discussed openly amongst keggers, but double secret when bottlers are present.:D

i think throwing 5 cornies in the trunk of my car for 4th of July is easier than the same amount of bottles, but day to day, bottles are less hassle.

lol @ secret!
 
I keg, then bottle...how's that for the worst of both worlds?

Truthfully, that's the better option. You can carbonate & clear in the keg, then put nice clear beer into the bottles. You don't have to worry about being perfect with mixing the priming sugar, or whether you have enough yeast left to carbonate, etc.

Kegging to carbonate, then bottling w/beergun off the keg, actually *does* solve a lot of bottling problems.

(Except for cleaning, sanitizing, capping, scrubbing labels off, etc, of course!)

The only downside is that you have to have a kegging setup to be able to do it, and once you have the kegging setup, it's really easy to get lazy and not bottle any more.

But work-wise, there's very little difference between siphoning into a bottling bucket and then filling your bottles from the spigot vs. siphoning into a keg, sealing it to carbonate, and then filling your bottles under pressure.
 
You should ask them how many breweries have moved on to only kegging if that's really a better way to do it. (The answer is probably somewhere around 0).
 
Actually it seems to be much easier and more common for breweries to start with kegs and then move to bottling, at least that is what I see with all the micros around here. On a large scale I think kegging would simpler and cheaper the only downside being you can only serve growlers to kegs directly to the customer.
 
You should ask them how many breweries have moved on to only kegging if that's really a better way to do it. (The answer is probably somewhere around 0).

I don't think the homebrewer has the same distribution and packaging concerns a commercial enterprise might have. Unless the argument is homebrewers bottle to make it easier to ship to many different retail locations.
 
Actually it seems to be much easier and more common for breweries to start with kegs and then move to bottling, at least that is what I see with all the micros around here. On a large scale I think kegging would simpler and cheaper the only downside being you can only serve growlers to kegs directly to the customer.

There are a bunch of micros in my area that started as keg only and moved to bottles later on for distro reasons. Even then, most don't bottle all their stuff, just the staples. The special and seasonal beers are kept keg only for simplicity among other reasons I am sure.

While there are some potential maintenance issues with a kegging system overall, I haven't found the equipment difficult to maintain or for it to provide any real problems that needed resolution. Putting a new beer on tap is as easy as racking from fermenter to a clean keg, putting it into the keezer and hookingit up. A 15min process and that includes the racking.
 
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