Bottle vs Keg

[superiorsat]

Keg (you know your going to end up there anyway some day) and bottle a six pack with the excess from the fermenter. That is how I started and to my palate kegging wins every time in a taste contest. I do 2 liter bottles now with a carbonation cap for my excess beer because I even like that better than bottled with natural fermentation/carbonation. Just my $.02.

 

[MicroMickey]

Graduating to kegging is something that most home-brewers eventually do, and only look back at bottling in amusement (or disdain). Hold on Bubba, there are lots of reasons to bottle homebrew. Perhaps a party or barbeque is on your social calendar, you don’t want to show up empty handed, but you don’t want to tote a keg, gas bottle, and a tub full of ice. Let’s say you want to enter a few bottles in a competition. Maybe you want to set aside a six-pack for extended aging. A simple growler fill may be what you need. Again, there are lots of reasons to bottle homebrew. These few examples are enough reason to be prepared for this necessary chore.

 

[Oleson M.D.]

One word answer...KEG!

 

[hotbeer]

When you are really advanced you can do both. Bottle some and keg, then you'll have the advantages of both.

And with kegging you'll have the option of filling your bottles from the keg. But to do that right you'll need to invest in some more expensive pressure bottling equipment. But for beers you might want to gift to others in a six pack or case of bottles, you can always just split a batch and naturally carbonate them.

I don't foresee me doing keg ever though. But you know how saying "never" works! I don't make but 2 - 2½ gallons at a time and I don't find bottles any trouble to deal with.

 

[TheCache]

I do 2.5G batches (24-26 bottles). I run between 14-17 batches a year. I'm the principal beer lover in my house so it's doubtful I will increase my volume except for possibly a couple of 5 gallon batches of summer beers. For me bottling is fine, I have it down to a pretty quick set of steps. It's just not that annoying and I'd rather put my money into other things at this point (like my growing woodshop).

I'd agree with some others above who say to do a few batches first. Make sure your in the game for the long haul. If so, spending a little extra to develop your capacity and capability by kegging would be a great idea.

 

[HVCBrewing]

Brewing has a few starting place that evolve to a variety of ending places. Put another way, it's hard to know what you want to be when you grow up. I started as an extract brewer + bottling. It was fun and I enjoyed the beer. I am currently a BIAB brewer and keg + keg condition most beers. I started with a single tap keg. Now I have a 4 tap keg. The evolutionary steps resulted in the accumulation a lot of extra & mis-matched items. Presently, I have several kegs - I still bottle some beers. It's a good storage solution + some beers are well suited for bottling (Barley Wine). I would suggest bottling for now. If you catch the fever - then buy a multi-tap set up. You can keg things other than beer. I have a tap with Skeeter Pee and a tap with carbonated water and a couple of beers.

 

[aceluby]

I started with one gallon batches and bottled all of those. Only took 30 min to bottle a batch, so it wasn't a big deal. My first 5 gallon batch I bottled as well. I used the biggest bottles I had, put some in a one gallon mini-keg, but others in some SS growlers I had, and it was still a huge undertaking. I did that once and then found a keezer with CO2, 4 kegs, taps, etc... just needed a good cleaning - for $400 on facebook marketplace. That deal was kind of insane, but I regularly see similar setups go for 5 or 600 bucks with everything included and multiple taps (or 2-300 bucks for 1-2 tap kegerators). I pretty much only keg my 5 gallon batches now and bottle my one gallon ones.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

TLDR through the comments. I have been bottling since I knew how to brew, I see it as 45 minutes to an hour of me getting to sit quietly and package my beer. My process is simple and doesn't require much effort, I am lucky though as I can bottle from my FV.. Maybe if I had room, I would consider kegging. This is where most people have a tough call to make, buy the necessary gear to be able to run kegs or just bottle. Maybe I'm simple minded like that, but some people squawking at how "inconvenient" bottling is is silly. It takes almost as little effort as filling a keg.

 

[aceluby]

TLDR through the comments. I have been bottling since I knew how to brew, I see it as 45 minutes to an hour of me getting to sit quietly and package my beer. My process is simple and doesn't require much effort, I am lucky though as I can bottle from my FV.. Maybe if I had room, I would consider kegging. This is where most people have a tough call to make, buy the necessary gear to be able to run kegs or just bottle. Maybe I'm simple minded like that, but some people squawking at how "inconvenient" bottling is is silly. It takes almost as little effort as filling a keg.

An hour? How? It takes me an hour just to sanitize 50 bottles, another 20-30 minutes to prep them with sugar, then another hour to fill. Keg takes 5 minutes to sanitize and 5 minutes to fill. Maybe you could share your process as to how you get 50 bottles sanitized, prepped, and filled in 45 minutes? It takes me that long to do a gallon.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

.

 

[passedpawn]

Bottling isn't hard. I recommend everyone bottle for a while. It also allows you to easily share your beers, which is a nice thing.

Serving from a keg is awesome though. Having homemade beer on tap is really nice. Also, no worries about sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

An hour? How? It takes me an hour just to sanitize 50 bottles, another 20-30 minutes to prep them with sugar, then another hour to fill. Keg takes 5 minutes to sanitize and 5 minutes to fill. Maybe you could share your process as to how you get 50 bottles sanitized, prepped, and filled in 45 minutes? It takes me that long to do a gallon.

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

 

[passedpawn]

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

I did the dishwasher for a while. Mine got hot enough to kill all. But it's true that the water doesn't really get up in there. I think it's far easier to just get a vinator and a bottling tree, and do your sanitizing right before you bottle. In the first pic, the vinator is on top of the bottling tree. Vinator is full of starsan solution and the caps, which are then sanitized.

And of course, you can do 2 bottles at once - if you're acrobatic like me

 

[hout17]

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

I agree sanitizing is a breeze. I literally pull out clean bottles (I rinse mine thoroughly right after a pour too) and sanitize each one with the sanitizing add on that sits on top of my bottling tree. Takes me like 5 minutes to sanitize and put my bottles on the tree. Then I proceed to bottling. Easy Button.