Any advantage to conditioning keg at room/cellaring temps

[303Dan]

Hello Everyone,

I just put my first batch in a keg a few days ago. Until now, I've been exclusively bottling.

I searched around quite a bit on the forum but couldn't find where anyone answered the specific question I had, which is:

When bottling, I understood and observed myself the importance of letting the beer (most of the time, anyway) condition at room/cellaring temps for at least a few weeks if not more. The beer changed so much during that time, but when I put bottles in the fridge, those seemed to stop changing, or at least changed at a slower or less noticeable rate compared to bottles of that same beer that I left at room temp.

Most people that keg, it seems to me, do not condition at room temp at all, but rather go right from the fermenter to the keg, (with or without cold crashing and/or clearing) and start carbonating, then right to drinking it.

So, I guess my questions boil down to: is there something about force carbonation without priming sugar that makes it not necessary to condition as long? Or does the beer in the keg still condition at serving temps? What makes the two methods (bottling vs kegging) different in terms of requiring time to condition, and doesn't the fact that the beer is cold in the kegging scenario change the way that conditioning happens?

Thanks in advance for any insight into how all of this works.

Dan

 

[kh54s10]

I have not run into this situation yet. I can tap 3 kegs. If I had a darker heavier beer and no room in the fridge I would pressurize it in my 4th keg and leave it out of the fridge for about the same time I would condition the beer if it were in bottles.

 

[fosaisu]

There is no distinction in terms of aging between force carbing and bottle carbing. As you observed, aging at room temp allows for faster changes than fridge temp, whether the beer's in bottles or a keg. The key question is whether your beer is improving as it's "conditioning." Some beers improve with time (porters, many higher ABV beers), others not so much (IPAs quickly begin to lose hop character, weisse beer is best served "fresh" as well). By chilling the beer you're "locking in" its current condition to some extent, which can be good or bad depending on whether the beer was still improving or was beginning to degrade.

As far as why keggers often toss their beer immediately into the kegerator after fermentation, generally it's because they want to start enjoying the beer (bottlers by necessity have to allow for at least a few weeks of room temp conditioning while carbonation takes place). So depending on the beer style, keggers may not be getting optimum quality. On the flip side, bottlers tend to store bottles warm largely because they don't have fridge space for cases and cases of beer. So bottlers may sometimes leave beers warm past the point where beneficial aging is occurring. Of course there are exceptions: many keggers have lots of kegs and will age beer at room temp in the keg (either because it's a style that improves with age or because they don't have kegerator space) and there are probably bottlers that will fridge entire batches when they've hit their peak to slow further changes.

That said, I've notice changes to my beers over the few months they generally spend in my kegerator before they're fully consumed (sometimes good, as with porters and lagers, sometimes not as with IPAs). So I can testify that refrigeration is not stopping the "conditioning" process, merely slowing it down.

 

[303Dan]

There is no distinction in terms of aging between force carbing and bottle carbing. As you observed, aging at room temp allows for faster changes than fridge temp, whether the beer's in bottles or a keg. The key question is whether your beer is improving as it's "conditioning." Some beers definitely improve with time (Porters, many higher ABV beers), others not so much (IPAs quickly begin to lose hop character, weisse beer is best served "fresh" as well). By chilling the beer you're "locking in" its current condition to some extent, which can be good or bad depending on what that condition is and whether the beer was still improving or was beginning to degrade.

As far as why keggers tend to toss their beer immediately into the kegerator after fermentation, I think it's largely because they want to start enjoying the beer (bottlers by necessity have to allow for at least a few weeks of room temp conditioning while carbonation takes place). So depending on the beer style, keggers may not be getting optimum quality. On the flip side, bottlers tend to store bottles warm largely because they don't have fridge space for cases and cases of beer. So in some cases bottlers may be leaving beers warm past the point where beneficial aging is occurring. Of course there are exceptions: many keggers have lots of kegs and will age beer at room temp in the keg (either because it's a style that improves with age or because they don't have kegerator space) and there are probably bottlers that will fridge entire batches when they've hit their peak to slow further changes.

That said, I've notice changes to my beers over the few months the generally spend in my kegerator before they're fully consumed (sometimes good, as with porters and lagers, sometimes not as with IPAs). So I can testify that refrigeration is not stopping the "conditioning" process, merely slowing it down.

Thank you so much, this answers my question 100%. The beer I just put in the keg (and cold crashed and cleared with gelatin) that is currently carbing up is an Amber. I guess what I will do is taste it once it's fully carbed and make a determination if it needs more time to condition. Then, if the answer to that is yes, and if I want it to condition faster than it would cold, I can just disconnect it from the gas, remove it from the fridge, leave it sealed and let it condition at 65-70 degrees F for a while.

Thanks again for your thorough answer.

Dan