Aging in Keg or Bottles?

[Paloaf]

I recently starting brewing more and more lagers and I'm running into a storage problem. I keg all of my beers and counterpressure fill to bottles for competitions and to share. I want to age some of my bigger beers (doppelbock, dunkel, etc.) to see how the flavors develop over the course of a year or so.

I could keep the beer in kegs, but I only have so much cold space. Would bottling the beers, to keep 4-6 of each kind on hand in the fridge, cause them to age differently than they would in the keg? My main concern is that sediment will accumulate in each bottle and then be roused if I were to enter into any competitions.

 

[PDX_T]

Yes, definitely. There is a huge difference in headspace air between a purged keg and a bottle, even if you can jet the bottles and cap them quickly, you will still have dramatically more oxygen in packaged product. It may not be a big difference, but only you will know.