MoreBeerz
Member
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2015
- Messages
- 5
- Reaction score
- 4
The back story:
I am a long time Belgian beer drinker who has dabbled in hop forward beers since they took off in New Zealand a few years back.
For years I didn't drink "draft" beers and often turned up my nose at beer that wasn't imported beer delivered in bottles and poured into glasses.
In NZ up until a few years ago almost all beer was mass produced and pretty much no one was drinking it for the flavour. Most people just bought (and still do) the same beer every time they went to the bottle shop because it tasted like "beer" and that was what they always got.
Enter the homebrew:
I have been brewing for about 3 years now and most of that time was spent bottling.
One day I tried to clone a great NEIPA (Deep Creek) and that turned out to turn brown almost overnight and quickly tasted like pure OXIDATION. This experience pretty much taught me everything I now know about oxidation.
Now there were a few flavour compounds in the oxidisation that I knew from previous beers, and these I enjoyed, but what it did to the hops, colour and stability was unforgivable.
Nowadays I corny keg and purge the keg with the CO2 from the fermentation. I then CO2 pressure transfer the beer from my (primary) fermenter to my keg to allow no oxygen ingress.
I'm not super concerned about hot side oxidation, and I prefer force carbing (I did some tests and force carbing gave me better results and no oxidation that I could taste).
But bottled beer taste BETTER (or does it):
I brew in 23L batches and usually end up with 20-21L of beer but my corny kegs are 19L so I bottle the rest. I am at the point where the bottled beer tastes so bad (to me) compared to the kegged beer that I will pay the same price for a 4L keg to keg the rest as I would pay for a 19L keg. Now the slightest hint of oxidation makes a beer pretty much undrinkable for me in most cases.
The bottles I have are usually a couple of weeks older than the kegged beer when I drink them, but this shouldn't really be enough (and isn't) to warrant the change in flavour.
Even at the same carbonation levels the kegged beer tastes malty, hoppy, crisp and clean. The bottled beer on the other hand tastes wrong on all of these parameters in comparison. I guess the word I would use to sum up the bottled beer is lifeless. This applies even to Belgian beers/sours and British stouts.
Oxygenation doesn't taste good (with some exceptions):
As I mentioned earlier there are some flavour compounds that I now know come from oxidisation that actually appeal to some people.
The best example I have of this is one of my earlier extract beers with "pale malt extract" that wasn't pale and must have been oxidised to have it's darkened colour, gave off a lovely apricot jam aroma and flavour and made "great" drinking. While I don't think this would slip down quite so easily now, the flavours that were created by the oxidisation were certainly some I am still trying to recreate.
I think the people you sometimes see online telling everyone their bottled beer tastes better than their kegged beer have probably never tasted a comparison of numerous beers that are oxygenated vs not, and potentially these people find some of the flavour compounds enjoyable and therefore encourage bottling.
I am a long time Belgian beer drinker who has dabbled in hop forward beers since they took off in New Zealand a few years back.
For years I didn't drink "draft" beers and often turned up my nose at beer that wasn't imported beer delivered in bottles and poured into glasses.
In NZ up until a few years ago almost all beer was mass produced and pretty much no one was drinking it for the flavour. Most people just bought (and still do) the same beer every time they went to the bottle shop because it tasted like "beer" and that was what they always got.
Enter the homebrew:
I have been brewing for about 3 years now and most of that time was spent bottling.
One day I tried to clone a great NEIPA (Deep Creek) and that turned out to turn brown almost overnight and quickly tasted like pure OXIDATION. This experience pretty much taught me everything I now know about oxidation.
Now there were a few flavour compounds in the oxidisation that I knew from previous beers, and these I enjoyed, but what it did to the hops, colour and stability was unforgivable.
Nowadays I corny keg and purge the keg with the CO2 from the fermentation. I then CO2 pressure transfer the beer from my (primary) fermenter to my keg to allow no oxygen ingress.
I'm not super concerned about hot side oxidation, and I prefer force carbing (I did some tests and force carbing gave me better results and no oxidation that I could taste).
But bottled beer taste BETTER (or does it):
I brew in 23L batches and usually end up with 20-21L of beer but my corny kegs are 19L so I bottle the rest. I am at the point where the bottled beer tastes so bad (to me) compared to the kegged beer that I will pay the same price for a 4L keg to keg the rest as I would pay for a 19L keg. Now the slightest hint of oxidation makes a beer pretty much undrinkable for me in most cases.
The bottles I have are usually a couple of weeks older than the kegged beer when I drink them, but this shouldn't really be enough (and isn't) to warrant the change in flavour.
Even at the same carbonation levels the kegged beer tastes malty, hoppy, crisp and clean. The bottled beer on the other hand tastes wrong on all of these parameters in comparison. I guess the word I would use to sum up the bottled beer is lifeless. This applies even to Belgian beers/sours and British stouts.
Oxygenation doesn't taste good (with some exceptions):
As I mentioned earlier there are some flavour compounds that I now know come from oxidisation that actually appeal to some people.
The best example I have of this is one of my earlier extract beers with "pale malt extract" that wasn't pale and must have been oxidised to have it's darkened colour, gave off a lovely apricot jam aroma and flavour and made "great" drinking. While I don't think this would slip down quite so easily now, the flavours that were created by the oxidisation were certainly some I am still trying to recreate.
I think the people you sometimes see online telling everyone their bottled beer tastes better than their kegged beer have probably never tasted a comparison of numerous beers that are oxygenated vs not, and potentially these people find some of the flavour compounds enjoyable and therefore encourage bottling.
