Hi all,
I'd like to ask your advice on possible future investments.
TL;DR: I'm planning on closed system bottling with force carbonation. Is this a good idea or waste of time and money?
I'll give you a little bit of background. I live in an apartment where I simply cannot keep my equipment. I only have equipment that I can carry to attic for storage after brewing, only bottles remain in the apartment. To put it simply - I'm fine getting new equipment that I can carry away after brewing. But it's a definitive no for keezer, kegerator etc. It has to be bottles, so I can stack a few in my kitchen refrigerator. I brew AG with Grainfather, I have SS fermenter (not pressurized), a Ferminator for temperature control etc.
I prefer very low alc beers (I consider 2-3% ABV to be a good middle ground but for some styles I think 4% is minimum). I try to minimize alcohol content in multiple different ways. Bottle conditioning introduces an extra 0.2-0.4% ABV alcohol, so that is quite a big portion in my beers.
I also tend to brew more than I drink and I might have bottles from brews ages ago, and therefore long shelf life is very important to me. I have limited oxygen contact: I rack from fermenter, use bottling wand, minimize headspace and use oxygen absorbing caps and ascorbic acid etc. I have not purged the bottle headspace. I'm not getting any off-flavors that I could identify with this setup - beers are good, but hoppy beers of course lose their oomph after a while.
Recently I have considered getting kegging equipment and an iTap only for the purpose of force carbonating my beer in a keg and bottling afterwards, keeping the system "closed" at all points. Almost identical to Closed system bottling, but force carbonating the beer first in the keg which would be in the Ferminator in low temp until bottling.
I believe this would introduce the following advantages:
I'd like to ask your advice on possible future investments.
TL;DR: I'm planning on closed system bottling with force carbonation. Is this a good idea or waste of time and money?
I'll give you a little bit of background. I live in an apartment where I simply cannot keep my equipment. I only have equipment that I can carry to attic for storage after brewing, only bottles remain in the apartment. To put it simply - I'm fine getting new equipment that I can carry away after brewing. But it's a definitive no for keezer, kegerator etc. It has to be bottles, so I can stack a few in my kitchen refrigerator. I brew AG with Grainfather, I have SS fermenter (not pressurized), a Ferminator for temperature control etc.
I prefer very low alc beers (I consider 2-3% ABV to be a good middle ground but for some styles I think 4% is minimum). I try to minimize alcohol content in multiple different ways. Bottle conditioning introduces an extra 0.2-0.4% ABV alcohol, so that is quite a big portion in my beers.
I also tend to brew more than I drink and I might have bottles from brews ages ago, and therefore long shelf life is very important to me. I have limited oxygen contact: I rack from fermenter, use bottling wand, minimize headspace and use oxygen absorbing caps and ascorbic acid etc. I have not purged the bottle headspace. I'm not getting any off-flavors that I could identify with this setup - beers are good, but hoppy beers of course lose their oomph after a while.
Recently I have considered getting kegging equipment and an iTap only for the purpose of force carbonating my beer in a keg and bottling afterwards, keeping the system "closed" at all points. Almost identical to Closed system bottling, but force carbonating the beer first in the keg which would be in the Ferminator in low temp until bottling.
I believe this would introduce the following advantages:
- Less oxygen contact and therefore longer shelf life and better suitability for bottling NEIPAs etc
- Less yeast and trub in the bottle
- Clearer looking beers
- I think I could keep them lying on their side in my refrigerator - a huge perk for my daily kitchen life
- More "portable" beer bottles that could be consumed immediately after travelling?
- Lower alcohol content (down by 0.2-0.4% ABV i.e. 10% in my low-alc beers)
- Doing all the work for both kegging AND bottling
- Bottling a 5 gallon batch with this system might be a long and exhaustive task
- More stuff to carry to the attic