Adding beer to existing keg

I was wondering, for stronger beers such as Barleywines or IIPAs, if it would be possible to keep a revolving keg.

Basically, brew a 5 gallon batch, let it age for a month or two, put it into a half-barrel keg with some oak chips and serve. Then start another batch, do the same, then add it to whatever was left in the first batch. Then add a third batch. Then every time the keg got a third empty, make another batch, let it age, and add it in.

Eventually you'd get a build up of yeast, right? But since the keg would never be empty, you could cut the dip tube a fraction of an inch shorter to prolong the time between reracking the entire keg.

Eventually though, would you start to taste autolysis? Could you do this for awhile? Could you get away with maybe only transferring the beer once every couple years?

I am sure it could be done, but that is going to be a LOT of foam when you add unless you de-carb the batch in the keg.

Well, the styles I'm thinking about wouldn't require a lot of carbonation- you wouldn't expect much head on a barleywine or IIPA. But yeah, I hadn't really considered that.

I don't know though... if I inserted a siphon down into the beer so it wasn't splashing, do you think you could get away with it? Or would the act of siphoning un-carbed beer into carbed beer cause the beer to off-gas?

I dont think that it would bother the beer too much to have a revolving keg. There are certain beers that they do that with. I forget the name of the technique, but it comes from wine making. I believe they usually do it in casks though. I'd love to keep a batch going. My dad has blended kegs before. I'll ask him about how he does it.

OFF TOPIC:
I would LOVE to have a recpie of that Gumball Head Clone you're working on.

If you figure out how to add beer to a non-existant keg, let us know.

This is a common thing to do for barrel aged things like sours and barleywines, but that is not the serving vessel.

olllllo said:

This is a common thing to do for barrel aged things like sours and barleywines, but that is not the serving vessel.

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So does using the serving vessel as the blending vessel create any issues that you can see?

My wild ass guess is that you should prepare for some mutations, flavor shifts and other interesting things which may or may not be desireable.