Kegged beer tastes MUCH better than bottled from the same batch

[Seeker]

I've been putting my beer in 20l collapsible water containers and serving both with beer pump and gravity and they taste great - at least as good as commercial in my opinion.

From the same batches I've been bottling a few - the first and last bits out the fermenter.

The last two have shown the following properties;


Earles Stone & Wood clone;

Bottle and keg both primed. Tasted 2 days after keg emptied.

Keg: very similar to real deal, and no off flavours, great fruit smell and flavour. Last pint out was intensely fruity.
Bottle: Some aroma, very weak fruit flavours, maybe slight sour flavour. I would call it HB twang if it weren't for the keg

Dr Smurtos GA

Neither bottle nor keg primed. Tasted 3 days after keg emptied

Keg: great balance and the best beer I've tasted for a long time. Last pint out as good as the first.
Bottle: ok - not much hop, tastes quite boring and I didn't want to crack another. Maybe slight HB twang.


Now the beer pump changes the beer a lot, but even gravity feed, the beer tastes like a different beer all together.

Is this just the difference between keg and bottle?

 

[whitegoose]

You know, I've always found a similar thing. Beer out of the keg tastes fresh and vibrant for a long time, whereas the beer I bottle tastes a bit dull and sometimes has that twang, and almost always has less hop presence. Not terrible, just not quite right. I'd always thought it may be the dextrose added to the bottle, or maybe it gets a little oxidsed? I've never really been sure, but then I also rarely bottle.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

You are getting confused about kegged and casked beer, through your gravity feed and beer pump is casked beer,. and your right casked will beat kegged and bottled beer hands down.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

You are getting confused about kegged and casked beer, through your gravity feed and beer pump is casked beer,. and your right casked will beat kegged and bottled beer hands down.

Why is that? Casked beer is in a giant container (like a bottle) - even plastic in this instance. What's the extra flavour offered? What difference does the pump produce?

Not trying to be smart, trying to continue the convo, as I may end up using the cube 'real ale' system soon, especially if my British Pale Ale turns out to have too much roasted barley (which it appears to have after a week in the bottle).

 

[Seeker]

I thought keg & cask were mostly interchangeable terms?

Lord Raja - go for it, I'm blown away by my beer - tastes just like hand pulled cask ale, and cost me less than $100 for three bags and pump.

I'm using these http://www.kathmandu.com.au/collapsible-water-container.html

They work great hooked up to a cheap boat water pump from BCF.

Last beers I tested primed bag vs non-primed and there was no difference through the pump. That means only 3-4 days conditioning. Takes about 15 minutes to fill the bag & clean up.

I made a sparkler by cutting up a sediment reducer and melting tiny holes in it.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

When I cask I don't prime the cask, in effect the beer is flat, but dispensing through the beer engine it pours very similar to a nitrogen pour, I don't know why, I have asked this question before and never got a reply, a nice creamy head which will last to the end of the drink. With a gravity I do prime but not to much, SE is the man to answer some of the questions about gravity and beer engine pours but he says he doesn't know why the beer engine has the effect on beer which it does.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Kegged beer is force carbonated with CO2, comparing the cask and the kegged side by side there is no comparison.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

So gravity poured with primed cube carbonation still works out well?

 

[Seeker]

The one gravity I tried was nice - tasted great, but not really fizzy. I doubt that's really possible with a water container. Held a head ok though.

 

[Bribie G]

UK style real ales don't take kindly to bottling. Until the rise of the craft beer movement and the interest in beers such as TTL, OSH, Spitfire etc most packaged beer in the UK was either 440ml cans, brown ales and stouts and a range of cheap pasteurised carbonated ordinary bitters usually sold in two pint flagons for home consumption. The majority of it was very ordinary and often quite nasty.



Tap king anyone?

Styles such as Special Bitters and ESBs are really meant to be drunk fresh and young from the pump and the TTL etc we get over here is an approximation.

This is often hard for Aussies to get their heads round because here, generally, the stubby version of a beer is the same as the tap version, they just flick a switch to send the flow to the bottling plant or the kegging plant for flash pasteurisation and artificial carbonation.

A good example of the principle is the recent posts about how dreadful John Smiths and Tetleys are out of the tin.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

Could it be the proportion of the amount of yeast secondary activity to carbonate the bottles versus a keg/cask strips the hops flavour/aroma out? Have you tried bottling a couple bottles with no priming sugar? Sure it won't be carbonated, but give it the same amount of time and compare purely the hop flavours/aromas and report back.

 

[Seeker]

I agree - I grew up drinking John Smiths, Stones and Tetley - all very ordinary out the tin & not that great out of a tap..

Maybe the decent bottled beers have some new process during bottling, like topping up with Co2?

Stuff like Hook Norton, and Badger beers taste great out of the bottle so there must be some way of doing it.

 

[Bribie G]

The "decent bottled beers" are pasteurised carbonated versions of the cask and taste good because the "parent" cask version is usually like dying and going to beer heaven.

 

[Seeker]

DJ Lethal; one of the beers listed was not primed and still tasted much worse than cask.

Bribie; point taken. I can't think of a single exception to that.

I'm glad I found casks as soon as I did as I think I would have given up by now judging by the taste of the bottled stuff I've produced - not even as good as bottle shop stuff.

 

[Bribie G]

Hey Seeker could you post a pic of your setup with the BCF pump? I got a pump and a water bag from BCF last year to try with cider but the bag got stored wet and went mouldy and the pump got accidentally run over.

Big problem was that I just couldn't work out the right pipes and clips to line up the pump inlet with the fiddly little tap on the bag so didn't get it working properly. Winter on the way, might try again.

 

[hoppy2B]

Good question Bribie, I just went to the BCF site to see what pumps they have and was about to ask a similar question to yours.

 

[mxd]

I assumed it would be like this one not too sure how you could bet a sparkler on it though ?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

This is a picture of my converted Amazon pump and a link to a build from an Amazon pump,my sparkler I got from Bunnings.( a tap mixer)

http://bagendbrewery.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/beer-engine-caskegerator-butterburs-bitter/

 

[Bribie G]

That rocket pump looks far more practical than the rather cheap plastic BCF "galley pump" I bought.
Where would you get one?

Edit: and does it draw up from the bag / cube without sucking air?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Got it of Amazon with shipping less than $50 doesn't suck in air and has a non return built in.