Kegging Vs Bottling

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vlbaby

Beer Budda
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hi everybody,

I recently bought a kegging system for my homebrew, and for my first brew using it I was amazed at the difference between the kegged beer and the bottled beer.
My keg only holds 18 L of beer, so the remainder I bottled as normal using white sugar for priming.

When both batches were ready I did a comparison and was suprised at the difference. The bottled beer seems to have what I call the typical homebrew smell and taste that I have been used to, but the kegged beer tasted closer to a commercial type beer.


Seeing the beer came from exactly the same batch, could it be the priming sugar that is altering the bottled beers taste.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has noticed the same thing. :)
 
I've done the same thing (bottled keg leftovers). Although everyone reckons you can't tell the difference, i swear that when i prime with DME vs sugar, i can tell the difference.
 
A couple of things come to mind.

I remember reading in Palmers book How To Brew his theory that a larger volume of beer matures faster. In this case a kegged beer will taste better, sooner.

The other factor may be temperature. You've probably kept your keg in the fridge (doh!) so it will cold-condition better than the bottles being kept at room temp.

Now what one of us should do is put most of the brew in a keg but bulk prime it with sugar instead of forced carbonation, and bottle a few as well with sugar. Leave them both for a few weeks, then chill them both over a couple of days and then try to pick the difference - who's game?

Trev
 
im not sure what tastes better, but I only keg, cause im lazy and cant be stuffed cleaning bottles... :p
 
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