Kegging vs. bottle conditioning wait times

[Bloom_198d]

Hello,

Im getting ready to start kegging my beers and im curious about why you can drink forced carbonated beer so quickly after kegging in comparison to bottle conditioning.

Having tasted bottle conditioned beer after only one week, I know that having a carbonated bottle does not make it drinkable. The beer will taste rather "green" and needs at least another week to clean up harsh flavours and usually does best with a few weeks. Why does forced carbonated beer in a keg not need extra weeks to clean up these flavours?

Is it because the harsh flavours are created by the yeast while eating the sugar to carbonate? will waiting longer in a keg improve flavour?

Adam

 

[the_trout]

I agree with your assessment that carbonated beer does not equal finished beer. My process is to "set and forget" meaning I set the beer at 12psi serving pressure and wait the 2-3 weeks for it to carb up. This builds in the needed conditioning time for the beer mature. My process is not faster than bottling only easier and obviously allows me to serve draft beer.

 

[Bobby_M]

You CAN drink kegged beers faster because you can force carb faster. It doesn't mean you should drink them faster though many people do. Of course there are any sorts of explanations for how you might get the beer to condition faster such as fermenting under pressure, cold crashing, clearing with fining agents, filtering, etc. Essentially a homebrewer can do the same kinds of things brewpubs do to get their kegged beer grain to glass in 2 weeks. But.... not cheap.

 

[Adrenaline-Junkie]

You have to consider the difference between the carbonation methods as well imo. Although i dont have much to back it up id imagine yeast turning sugar into carbon dioxide can cause conditions/flavors that need time to go away.