botteling/kegging 10+ gallon batches.

I currently brew and keg in 5 gallon batches, and am contemplating moving up to 10 gallons. My kegging setup is two 5 gallon corneys at the moment, so i was thinking about the different ways of storing 10+ gallon batches. I could buy extra corneys ( i like having more than one kind of beer on tap), or keep half in a carboy until needed, or bottle half.... but anyways i was curious what solutions everyone on here is using.

Bottling sucks. I keg them all.

Yooper said:

Bottling sucks. I keg them all.

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Yeah, pretty much. I only bottle to give beer(s) to friends. Buy more cornies. You won't be sorry.

I wish I'd saved the money I spent on 22oz bottles and put that towards kegs.... just sayin..

i bottled for a long time, switch to kegging, wished i had kegged sooner to, se if you can get a few bucks out of the bottles, otherwise pony up for some more cornies

I bottle with no issue, it is done in and hour and being that I have my wife to help me it is easy and fun. However, if I was doing 10g batches I would look into kegging, as that is a lot of bottles to do, and if I was the type of person who was doing 10g batches I would be also the type to have use for kegs.

I like storing a few bottles in the fridge, and don't have a fridge specifically for a keg, so bottling it is for me. But, with a 10g batch, I would indeed suggest kegging for the time issue.

I put everything into kegs, carbonate, and bottle how many I want from the keg.

pm5k00 said:

I currently brew and keg in 5 gallon batches, and am contemplating moving up to 10 gallons. My kegging setup is two 5 gallon corneys at the moment, so i was thinking about the different ways of storing 10+ gallon batches. I could buy extra corneys ( i like having more than one kind of beer on tap), or keep half in a carboy until needed, or bottle half.... but anyways i was curious what solutions everyone on here is using.

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If you only have 2 on tap why would you want to make 10 gallons of the same. Yes get more kegs of course allows more choices but I would continue with 5 galllon batches. my .02

I am now doing 10g batches. To increase the variety, i dry hop 5g and leave 5g per the original recipe.

9 kegs and i don't regret buying any of them. keeps a good pipeline, as well as lets me age some longer

Given the volumes I want to get to by the end of the year I should probably invest in kegging equipment. But I firmly believe you need to at least go the hard route once before taking the shortcut. I brewed my first 10-gallon batch a few weeks ago, and just bottled last night. Wasn't as bad as I expected because of the amount of 22oz bottles, but it was still tedious - took about 1 hr 45 minutes start to finish with cleanup. I'd like to get to kegging ASAP but won't have time to build a nice keezer, not to mention buy everything I'd need.

I must admit I enjoy bottling a little though - pour a brew, get the radio going and just zone out for a while. We'll see how long I put with bottling before making the plunge.

Cheers guys, have a good weekend!

If you must bottle, then bottle 5 gallons and keg 5 gallons. Best of both worlds.

I bottled exactly once...hated it! Between my buddy and I we own twenty-some cornies. I lost count exactly. Only problem is they are mostly empty now.

Forget bottling, go kegging!
Brewing 10 gal batches rocks as long as you have a bunch of recipes that you like. To keep my beer more interesting, I use different yeasts for the same batches. I just brewed a 10 gal batch of nut brown ale, and I used Notty yeast in one fermenter and Cali Ale yeast in the other. When I keg it, one keg will be force-carbed and cracked open it 2-3 days, the other one will be primed with sugar and naturally carbonated over time and I will open it 1-2 months later.
This way I never have to drink the same beer back-to-back, although some extra corneys come in handy (I got 6 of them)