Bottle aging vs bulk aging

I searched the forum but couldn't find any definite advantage to bulk aging vs bottle aging besides more consistency from bulk aging and even that seems to be debatable.
I have a 1.100 RIS thats been in primary for five weeks. Normally I would rack to secondary for another five months before bottling but Im going to my holiday house at the coast and want to take some bottles with me where they can stay hidden and age untill next time Im there.
Is there any real disadvantage to bottling now and aging in the bottle ?

You're actually in the best position to tell us. You could bottle half and take it with you and put the other half in a 3 gallon container to bulk age, and do a comparison down the line.

Stuff like this is really not quantifyable, it's more subjective than anything else. Since we're dealing with taste, and taste is subjective. That's why you can't find much concrete information on it.

No harm will be done either way. But if you do test if for yourself you may find two subtly different beers.

I don't know if it's the same for beer, but I once went to a vertical wine tasting of single grape/vineyard zinfandels. That means tasting every year from the same vineyard. You could really tell the aging differences in the bottles. 3 years tasted young, 5 years peak, 7 years was starting to go downhill.

Interestingly, for the same wines bottled in magnums (3 liters vs. 750 ml), the 5 year samples tasted young, and the 8 years were approaching their peak. There were none yet going downhill.

What I learned from this is that the bigger the container, the slower the aging. This held up for two different vineyards.

However, several things might prevent this generalization from applying to beer: corks vs. caps, shorter vs. longer aging times, grape solids chemistry vs. malt chemistry. Still, it's one data point.....

Revvy - I may just try that.
RichBenn - interesting about the wine. The trend on HBT is to bulk age but for no definite reason. I also have been bulk aging. It may be one of those things like secondaries, HSA etc etc.
Theres only one way to find out - Im going to go ahead and bottle.

Bru said:

Revvy - I may just try that.
RichBenn - interesting about the wine. The trend on HBT is to bulk age but for no definite reason. I also have been bulk aging. It may be one of those things like secondaries, HSA etc etc.
Theres only one way to find out - Im going to go ahead and bottle.

Click to expand...

I do wine as well. On the winepress kit wine forum, the biggest reason given for bulk aging is to keep one's hands off of it. It's just too tempting after it's bottled! Of course if you are oaking with a barrel, then there is another reason for bulk aging.

Bru - How did the beer turn out?

The guy at my LHBS said the reason to bulk age as opposed to bottle age is because bulk aging causes less temperate fluctuations. I believe he was referring to mead but I assume it would apply to beer, wine Ect. I'd be curious to hear how the beer turned out Bru.

Double Necro...

OP was from 2010.. Necro 1 was from 2013... Now Necro 2 from 2017... Another 3-4 years and we were be ready for another post... And @Bru still hasn't answered