Brew Tips: Bottling or Kegging
This will be a two part piece in one. The first on bottling vs. kegging and the second on the various keg carbonation techniques.
So, first off, bottling vs. kegging. Read any home brew forum for a while and you'll soon discover that each side has its advocates. Each arguing rather loudly for their side, with the kegging side probably having a lot more people.
I bottled for a few months. And, in the early days I didn't mind it. Towards the end, I was making smaller batches because I didn't want to bottle. Which lead to me running out of beer and having to (heavens forbid) buy some.
My vote here is, every one is different. And, for most it will depend on a number of factors. Primarily how much you want to invest in bottling day and how long those efforts will last. Since my wife also drinks our homebrew and we generally have a pint a day (some nights two, some nights none, evens out to about 1 a day each), we would blow through a 5 gallon batch in 2-3 weeks. Which means I need to be brewing a 5 gallon batch every 2 or so weeks. As you might imagine, that meant bottling quite frequently. And quite a few bottles at that. If my wife weren't a beer drinker that would cut our consumption in half and I would probably not drink as often without someone to enjoy one with. And in those circumstances, bottling would probably have tided me over for quite a while longer, if not indefinitely.
Bottling is also easier to distribute with friends. I can certainly fill a bottle if it will be consumed in a day or two. But without a beer gun or something similar, which is ultimately more costs to add to the whole equation, you won't be able to share your brew outside of your house as easily.
I will say this about kegging. Don't start it unless you want to get hooked. There is nothing wrong with bottling, but VERY few people have ever gone back to bottling exclusively after kegging from what I see on the forums. Bottling for me was an hour long affair IF the bottles were already cleaned and sanitized. I kegged my most recent batch in probably a half hour or less including sanitizing the keg. Cleaning the keg involved dumping some B-Brite in and leaving it for a few hours... added maybe 5 minutes of extra time, most of which was waiting for the water to fill it.
Problematically however, kegging is far more expensive than most forums would have you believe. Reason being; most are older posts and home brewing became quite popular over the past few years and the used keg supply is drying up. I find that buying individual used kegs is almost as expensive as buying new ones. The other costs are also highly variable depending on whether you're going new or used (and what's available if going used) and whether or not you're willing build contraptions yourself. Either way, you're probably looking at $300-1000 to get started. And the top of that range is definitely intimidating.
My getup cost me about $800. I bought a ball-lock conversion kit with picnic faucets (cheapest way to get started) with 2 used legs and a 10# CO2 tank. I think that was $500 after taxes. If I did it again, I would probably have not bought the CO2 tank online, most places in my area will only exchange and I probably ended up spending more by not simply buying at the places that do the exchanges. But, that wouldn't have shaved a ton off of that. And you really want to get the conversion kit new. If you can source the kegs cheaper outside of a kit, do it. I couldn't. I also spent $50 on the CO2 tank refill (well, they didn't have any 10#'s so they upgraded me to a 20# hence the large price). Then I got a new mini fridge for $150. And another $100+ to convert it into a keggerator large enough to hold everything.
Fridges or freezers you can get for free if you look around long enough. But that argument doesn't hold a lot of weight with me. I couldn't find one I could trust was in good shape at the time I wanted to start this project.
Also, if you aren't willing to build an insulated box to increase the size of your keggerator, you'll likely need a bigger (more expensive) fridge. Like I said, kegging can get pricey to start. And while it is true that a lot of stuff can be found free/cheap it can take a LONG time to acquire everything through that approach. And no one wants to pick up a free lemon of a fridge or freezer.
Then there comes new options for carbonating. A hassle in and of itself. And another majorly controversial subject. Bottling you feasibly only have the option of naturally carbonating. With kegging you have natural carbonation, forced carbonating the slow way and various faster ways.
The super fast way is to fill the keg, pressurize it, leave it hooked up at high PSI and rock the keg on it's side back and forth. The technique and time varies by who you ask. But, in pretty much all cases you're looking at drinking in 1 hour to a few days. Great right? Well there are problems. Firstly, you may spray beer everywhere as you vent the keg back down to serving pressure. But also, you're robbing your beer of precious aging and cold conditioning time. Between the potential mess and how quick I am to bottle/keg my beers they benefit from time.
Which leads to the slow forced carb method. Again, there are some variations. The simplest is, use a chart to figure out the pressure you need. Set it, and leave it for 1-3 weeks. Not a hell of a lot faster than natural carbonation in my opinion. And you use more CO2 from your tank in the process (same goes for the fast method as well). But, at least this way you're getting your cold conditioning done. Variations here basically involve cranking the pressure up even higher for a few days and then dropping it back to serving pressure and venting. If you don't want the mess of the other fast method and you have a dual regulator, this can be ideal (dual regulator is assuming you have more than one keg, you don't want to serve your other beers at 20-40 PSI, if you just have the one keg, then go to town).
Natural carb in a keg is also a little different from bottling, but not by much. Mix in priming sugars, rack to the keg, pressurize the headspace and vent out a few times to purge oxygen and wait. Then chill, cold condition (or not) and serve.
I have multiple taps, but no dual regulator. So while I like the idea of cranking the pressure for a few days, with my current setup, that isn't my ideal approach. I've also only got two taps and two gas lines and I like having at least 2 beers drinkable at a time. After discovering just how truly slow the set it and forget it approach is (2 weeks in and my beers are JUST getting noticeably carbonated), I decided natural carb is the way for me to go. I can carbonate and cold condition without any extra lines.
So there you have it, bottling depends on your patience level and amount of beer you consume. But I think if you're serious about making beer for a while, then kegging probably makes sense. Remember plastic bottles shouldn't be reused indefinitely, and neither should glass (scratch over time, etc...), over time the cost of bottles/caps/etc... will eventually lose out over kegs which can be reused far longer and parts can be replaced cheap. And then of course there is the value of your time.
As for carbonating your kegs, the advice is even murkier. There are trade-offs to all approaches, and some really depend on how much equipment and beer/lines you have. If you have the spare regulators and the time to figure out how much pressure you need, I think blasting the kegs with high PSI for a few days and then cold conditioning is a great way to go. Almost as fast as the fastest alternatives and without the potential mess, so if you really want to drink it quick, you still can. While you're using extra CO2 to carbonate, I think the cost is probably comparable, if not cheaper, than priming sugar anyway.
But, if you've settled into a rhythm for how often you need to brew and carb for bottling, then you're probably also fine with just naturally carbonating your beer anyway. As a bonus, you don't need extra space in your keggerator for the kegs which are carbonating and aging. I have room in the fridge for the extra keg, and I might just use it to get a head start on cold conditioning after a week or two of carbonating since I typically make IPA's and they'll improve more from cold conditioning than from room temperature aging. But if I didn't have the space it wouldn't kill me either. My bottles mostly aged at room temp anyway. And the stainless steel kegs don't leach oxygen like plastic bottles and caps on glass bottles do over time, so it is already an improvement.
Oh, and one last point. Another reason I went kegging. Less room for error and less prone to introduce oxygen. I never had a spoiled batch. But, the peace of mind really is worth something. Not enough on its own to make me switch. But combine it with the time savings which allowed me to get excited about home brewing again (and coming into some extra cash to finance it) and I was sold.
So, first off, bottling vs. kegging. Read any home brew forum for a while and you'll soon discover that each side has its advocates. Each arguing rather loudly for their side, with the kegging side probably having a lot more people.
I bottled for a few months. And, in the early days I didn't mind it. Towards the end, I was making smaller batches because I didn't want to bottle. Which lead to me running out of beer and having to (heavens forbid) buy some.
My vote here is, every one is different. And, for most it will depend on a number of factors. Primarily how much you want to invest in bottling day and how long those efforts will last. Since my wife also drinks our homebrew and we generally have a pint a day (some nights two, some nights none, evens out to about 1 a day each), we would blow through a 5 gallon batch in 2-3 weeks. Which means I need to be brewing a 5 gallon batch every 2 or so weeks. As you might imagine, that meant bottling quite frequently. And quite a few bottles at that. If my wife weren't a beer drinker that would cut our consumption in half and I would probably not drink as often without someone to enjoy one with. And in those circumstances, bottling would probably have tided me over for quite a while longer, if not indefinitely.
Bottling is also easier to distribute with friends. I can certainly fill a bottle if it will be consumed in a day or two. But without a beer gun or something similar, which is ultimately more costs to add to the whole equation, you won't be able to share your brew outside of your house as easily.
I will say this about kegging. Don't start it unless you want to get hooked. There is nothing wrong with bottling, but VERY few people have ever gone back to bottling exclusively after kegging from what I see on the forums. Bottling for me was an hour long affair IF the bottles were already cleaned and sanitized. I kegged my most recent batch in probably a half hour or less including sanitizing the keg. Cleaning the keg involved dumping some B-Brite in and leaving it for a few hours... added maybe 5 minutes of extra time, most of which was waiting for the water to fill it.
Problematically however, kegging is far more expensive than most forums would have you believe. Reason being; most are older posts and home brewing became quite popular over the past few years and the used keg supply is drying up. I find that buying individual used kegs is almost as expensive as buying new ones. The other costs are also highly variable depending on whether you're going new or used (and what's available if going used) and whether or not you're willing build contraptions yourself. Either way, you're probably looking at $300-1000 to get started. And the top of that range is definitely intimidating.
My getup cost me about $800. I bought a ball-lock conversion kit with picnic faucets (cheapest way to get started) with 2 used legs and a 10# CO2 tank. I think that was $500 after taxes. If I did it again, I would probably have not bought the CO2 tank online, most places in my area will only exchange and I probably ended up spending more by not simply buying at the places that do the exchanges. But, that wouldn't have shaved a ton off of that. And you really want to get the conversion kit new. If you can source the kegs cheaper outside of a kit, do it. I couldn't. I also spent $50 on the CO2 tank refill (well, they didn't have any 10#'s so they upgraded me to a 20# hence the large price). Then I got a new mini fridge for $150. And another $100+ to convert it into a keggerator large enough to hold everything.
Fridges or freezers you can get for free if you look around long enough. But that argument doesn't hold a lot of weight with me. I couldn't find one I could trust was in good shape at the time I wanted to start this project.
Also, if you aren't willing to build an insulated box to increase the size of your keggerator, you'll likely need a bigger (more expensive) fridge. Like I said, kegging can get pricey to start. And while it is true that a lot of stuff can be found free/cheap it can take a LONG time to acquire everything through that approach. And no one wants to pick up a free lemon of a fridge or freezer.
Then there comes new options for carbonating. A hassle in and of itself. And another majorly controversial subject. Bottling you feasibly only have the option of naturally carbonating. With kegging you have natural carbonation, forced carbonating the slow way and various faster ways.
The super fast way is to fill the keg, pressurize it, leave it hooked up at high PSI and rock the keg on it's side back and forth. The technique and time varies by who you ask. But, in pretty much all cases you're looking at drinking in 1 hour to a few days. Great right? Well there are problems. Firstly, you may spray beer everywhere as you vent the keg back down to serving pressure. But also, you're robbing your beer of precious aging and cold conditioning time. Between the potential mess and how quick I am to bottle/keg my beers they benefit from time.
Which leads to the slow forced carb method. Again, there are some variations. The simplest is, use a chart to figure out the pressure you need. Set it, and leave it for 1-3 weeks. Not a hell of a lot faster than natural carbonation in my opinion. And you use more CO2 from your tank in the process (same goes for the fast method as well). But, at least this way you're getting your cold conditioning done. Variations here basically involve cranking the pressure up even higher for a few days and then dropping it back to serving pressure and venting. If you don't want the mess of the other fast method and you have a dual regulator, this can be ideal (dual regulator is assuming you have more than one keg, you don't want to serve your other beers at 20-40 PSI, if you just have the one keg, then go to town).
Natural carb in a keg is also a little different from bottling, but not by much. Mix in priming sugars, rack to the keg, pressurize the headspace and vent out a few times to purge oxygen and wait. Then chill, cold condition (or not) and serve.
I have multiple taps, but no dual regulator. So while I like the idea of cranking the pressure for a few days, with my current setup, that isn't my ideal approach. I've also only got two taps and two gas lines and I like having at least 2 beers drinkable at a time. After discovering just how truly slow the set it and forget it approach is (2 weeks in and my beers are JUST getting noticeably carbonated), I decided natural carb is the way for me to go. I can carbonate and cold condition without any extra lines.
So there you have it, bottling depends on your patience level and amount of beer you consume. But I think if you're serious about making beer for a while, then kegging probably makes sense. Remember plastic bottles shouldn't be reused indefinitely, and neither should glass (scratch over time, etc...), over time the cost of bottles/caps/etc... will eventually lose out over kegs which can be reused far longer and parts can be replaced cheap. And then of course there is the value of your time.
As for carbonating your kegs, the advice is even murkier. There are trade-offs to all approaches, and some really depend on how much equipment and beer/lines you have. If you have the spare regulators and the time to figure out how much pressure you need, I think blasting the kegs with high PSI for a few days and then cold conditioning is a great way to go. Almost as fast as the fastest alternatives and without the potential mess, so if you really want to drink it quick, you still can. While you're using extra CO2 to carbonate, I think the cost is probably comparable, if not cheaper, than priming sugar anyway.
But, if you've settled into a rhythm for how often you need to brew and carb for bottling, then you're probably also fine with just naturally carbonating your beer anyway. As a bonus, you don't need extra space in your keggerator for the kegs which are carbonating and aging. I have room in the fridge for the extra keg, and I might just use it to get a head start on cold conditioning after a week or two of carbonating since I typically make IPA's and they'll improve more from cold conditioning than from room temperature aging. But if I didn't have the space it wouldn't kill me either. My bottles mostly aged at room temp anyway. And the stainless steel kegs don't leach oxygen like plastic bottles and caps on glass bottles do over time, so it is already an improvement.
Oh, and one last point. Another reason I went kegging. Less room for error and less prone to introduce oxygen. I never had a spoiled batch. But, the peace of mind really is worth something. Not enough on its own to make me switch. But combine it with the time savings which allowed me to get excited about home brewing again (and coming into some extra cash to finance it) and I was sold.
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