Belgium Quad, keg or bottle?

[baer19d]

I'm about to brew my first "big" beer and am debating weather or not to keg.
BTW, I keg all my other beer and hate washing and filling bottles. Any downside to kegging this style of beer? Since this beer is likely to last a while bottles might make more sense.

 

[eric19312]

I prefer bottle conditioning for big beers intended for aging.

 

[radwizard]

Is it tasting good? Has it aged a bit? I like to keg and beer gun this kinda stuff. I would age something like this in a keg, and once it rounded out and was tasting good, I would carb it up in a keg. I like the predictability of force carbing. This method would allow me to keep a gallon or two on tap, and cellar the rest for more aging. Just a thought. There isn't anything wrong with kegging the whole thing. It just takes a while for me to kill 5 gallons of quad.

 

[mj1angier]

Got one just finishing up in ferm and will keg half and bottle half. I try to make all my batches 5.75-6.50 gallons so I can bottle a few to see if they get better with age like me!

 

[Yooper]

If you can tie a keg up for a year or two, I'd keg it. You can always bottle from the keg later if you want. I did that with a tripel. I had it in a keg for about a year, and there was maybe 2 gallons or so left and so I just bottled that from the keg and put those in the cellar.

 

[baer19d]

I like radwizards and yoopers idea of kegging up front and bottleing later. I have plenty of kegs so tieing one up for a while isn't a problem. Having it in a keg certainly makes it easier to taste a sample.

 

[GoldenWeekendBrewing]

I made a Quad (11%), 2.5 gal batch. Bottled it in corked Belgian bottles. It's been aging for about 2 years, problem is, I didn't re-yeast at bottling, and it never carbed Now I'm struggling with what to do. Probably going to end up slowly pouring it into a keg, unless anyone has any good ideas? So if you decide to bottle, I would re-yeast, even if your using high gravity yeast.

- Jeff

 

[Easycreeper]

I made a Quad (11%), 2.5 gal batch. Bottled it in corked Belgian bottles. It's been aging for about 2 years, problem is, I didn't re-yeast at bottling, and it never carbed Now I'm struggling with what to do. Probably going to end up slowly pouring it into a keg, unless anyone has any good ideas? So if you decide to bottle, I would re-yeast, even if your using high gravity yeast.

- Jeff

If you're going to be opening them anyway and there's still priming sugar that hasn't been consumed by yeast, I'd rehydrate some EC-1118 and add a couple drops to each bottle. Had to do that with my first two big beers since the original yeast was too pooped to bottle condition. Used a sanitized glass eye dropper ordered from Amazon to make the addition.

 

[Horseflesh]

Jeff, if you like how your flat bottled quad tastes, I'd carb at serving time rather than risk opening/resealing bottles, or transferring to a keg. Get a carbonation cap, pour a bottle of chilled quad into a liter soda bottle, pressurize at 35 PSI, pop it in the fridge for 30 minutes, pour and drink. That's my two cents anyway.

Hey Yooper, if you were dedicating a keg to long term quad conditioning, what PSI would you store under?

 

[GoldenWeekendBrewing]

I made a Quad (11%), 2.5 gal batch. Bottled it in corked Belgian bottles. It's been aging for about 2 years, problem is, I didn't re-yeast at bottling, and it never carbed Now I'm struggling with what to do. Probably going to end up slowly pouring it into a keg, unless anyone has any good ideas? So if you decide to bottle, I would re-yeast, even if your using high gravity yeast.

Update: After > 2 years, I ended up uncorking each bottle. I hydrated dry yeast "Danstar Cask and Bottle Conditioning Ale Yeast, "drew it up in a syringe, and dropped a few cc's into each bottle. I then sprayed a little CO2 in each bottle from a small extra tank I have, and re-corked/caged the bottles. 2 weeks later, it's carbonated, and tasting fantastic!