Belgians and Beer Guns

[luckybeagle]

Belgians generally benefit from bottle conditioning and cellaring. Rochefort clone recipes on Candisyrup.com call for 12 months of it, as do many of the other Quads, Tripels, etc.

Is it the fact that you are conducting a secondary fermentation in the bottle via bottling sugar/some fermentable added at bottling time that makes these beers come together so well, or is it the time spent in the bottle at room/cellar temps that matters the most?

I'm asking because I'm curious if similar results could be achieved by kegging a traditionally bottle conditioned Belgian, and using a counter pressure filler to fill a few six packs of force carbonated beer for longer term storage/aging? I just ordered a counter pressure filler and have a Golden Strong ready to come out of the carboy...

 

[eric19312]

Bottle fermentation eliminates or at least reduces oxygen that gets picked up in bottling. This is super important in beers meant to be aged. Kegging and filling carbed also works fine for Belgian beers but I would not plan extended aging with those regardless of recipe instructions. Please correct me if I’m mistaken, I do use a beer gun from time to time but perhaps counter pressure system is sufficiently closed transfer that you don’t pick up O2.

 

[luckybeagle]

Thank eric, makes sense. I realize I titled this post wrong. I bought a counterpressure filler (not a beer gun), so I'd think the oxygen introduction is minimal, especially if I do the whole "cap on foam" technique, but I'm still a bit weary. I guess we'll see! Maybe I'll stick with the tried and true bottle priming method for very special beers (quads, barleywines etc), but use the counter pressure filler to finish off a keg when I get sick of what's on tap and have another one ready to go on.

 

[TheMadKing]

Along these same lines - and not to threadjack OP - but have you had good luck preserving the high level of carbonation required of belgian styles by force carbing and bottling? I've heard that it's very difficult to get that effervescent carbonation level unless you bottle condition