Aging question

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holjim

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I've just gotten into kegging and will (hopefully) never have to go back to bottles unless I happen to want to for some special reason.

My question relates to aging in kegs -- I can't quite wrap my head around it and I'm sure somebody can give me the whys (not that it's a huge deal, as I accept what you have to do, I'm just trying to figure out the why).

If you are just going to prime with sugar and age your beer in a keg, the sugar oviously is for the carbonation but does it also help in the aging process.

I ask only because when you're bottling, you have to prime to get the beer to carbonate and I just take for granted the aging as it all happens at the same time (you wait your min 21 days and hopefully you have carbonated and fairly good tasting beer).

So the thing that I can't quite answer in my head is -- if you are not using sugar and are either force carbing or letting it just age in the keg before doing so, what is different about aging in the keg as opposed to it just sitting in the secondary for a few extra weeks? Is it the extra yeast in the secondary or something like that.

I totally accept that the beer does in fact need to age. But what I can't figure out is why it would age differently in a carboy (basically just continuing to secondary for three extra weeks) as opposed to putting it in a keg or in bottles for the three weeks.

I don't know why I care but I was just thinking about it and was hoping somebody could give me the science (or is there no difference...)?

Thx!

Jim
 
There's no real difference between a keg and secondary at that point. I skip secondary and go straight to a keg, and it works out just fine.
 
If we were to say, run an experiment where a batch was split between a carboy and a keg and priming sugar was added to each and the stuff was left to sit for a month what would be the difference.

Besides the obvious: carbonation in the kegged batch. I think there may be a difference in taste. Yeast metabolize differently in a vessle under 14psi (atmospheric) and 14+15 (for instance) psi. The extra CO2 in solution will also affect yeast metabolism. How much will this alter the taste?? I don't know, maybe more in a light lager than in something like a stout.

One difference is that there is less chance of oxygen contamination in a vessle under CO2 pressurization.
 
So then if a brew was left for 4 weeks in a carboy secondary (after a two week primary) or was bottled/kegged and left for 4 weeks, in theory, the beer should be about the same (minus whatever carb issues there might be)?
 
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