Keg or Bottle?

[OrangeOak]

I'm currently fermenting a Chocolate stout and will need to decide the proper way to store and serve it. I have a 3 tap keg system, but I do not have a stout faucet or a beer gas tank.

If I keg the beer, it will be served on CO2 from a regular 525ss Perlick faucet. Would bottling this be best or will the regular faucet be ok for a stout? Does the stout faucet and beer gas make that much of a difference?

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

 

[brettclutch]

It does make a difference in how the carbonation of the beverage is and some of how it drinks. Since the byproduct of yeast is CO2 and the gas you would use in kegging in CO2 I would say both of these or the same. So you can either bottle or keg doesn't matter in your comparison, the only thing that kegging with bear gas or nitro gives you is a smoother finer carbonation. If you ever had a Guinness (Everyone on this board should have) one of the first things you notice is there is no acid bite at the back of the tongue. Nitro is what does that since the carbonation is so smooth.
-Brett

 

[BierMuncher]

I serve stouts from a normal tap set up all the time. All a stout faucet does is agitate the beer through a small diffuser plate in order to knock out a lot of the carbonation and deliver a slightly flatter/smoother beer.

I've found that an aggressive pour into a pint glass will get similar results. Just let the beer settle and then top off.

 

[OrangeOak]

Thanks guys. I believe I will keg this one then, if it's not going to make that much of a difference. It will be nice to have a dark beer on tap for once.

Now I've just got to save up and get myself a nitrogen setup. Then this won't every be a question again!