Temperature during and after bottling from keg.

[javert]

I'm going to bottle from a keg using a recently acquired BeerGun in order to experiment since sometimes the sweet aftertaste of the priming sugar lingers for a lot of time. My fridge was full so I used to "A bottler's guide to kegging" table to set my keg at 22 bar to get the desired 2 vols of CO2. However, all guides I've seen talk about bottling the beer cold, so this raised some questions:

If I disconnect the pressurized keg and chill it down to 4 °C / 39 °F, am I going to lose carbonation due to the temperature change?

Isn't beer going to be ruined if bottled cold and then stored at higher temperatures (I have a room at 67 °F for fermentation). If beer is going to be forever tied to a fridge or cooler after bottling it from a keg then the whole utility of the BeerGun is greatly limited compared to natural carbonation.

 

[day_trippr]

22 bar would be exciting - for about a second before something 'sploded

Once a sealed vessel of beer has been carbonated to a certain level, as long as the vessel remains sealed the volumes of CO2 isn't going to change. So one can carbonate at room temperature to, say, 2 volumes, allowing the beer to fully reach equilibrium, then stick that sealed vessel in a 38°F fridge and it'll still have 2 volumes of CO2 when it hits that temperature.

As for storage: it is a fact that virtually all reactions on this planet happen faster with increased temperature, so if you have oxygen ingress during packaging, for instance, that'll change the character of the beer faster if left warm instead of kept cold.

I get the space constraint-driven approach, but given the effects of warm storage and the difficulty in preventing any O2 uptake (not to mention the difficulty maintaining carbonation during the bottle fill), imo the real utility of a beer gun for a kegger is for "road beers" (not to be taken literally - I mean taking beer off-premises for some worthwhile endeavor - say, boating or camping or fishing). Bottling for storage should included the "natural" carbonation thereof which can greatly reduce oxidation potential.

Otherwise, if one has the room, used fridges from the likes of Craig's List can be stunningly cheap...

Cheers!

 

[javert]

Oops, brainfart. I meant 22 psi. Anyway, I already tested the bottling process and, as everyone here would have expected, it was a foamy mess of bottled flat beer. so that's another entry for the "Don't do that" thread.

Thanks for the answer dude. Now it's clear to me that cold is essential. I understand warmer ages the beer faster, my only question remaining is if a beer that has been once cold will develop particular off flavors that a beer that has been warm all the time since its bottling (naturally carbonated and stored at 68 °F) wouldn't. It's common knowledge for any non-brewer not to let warm a commercial beer that has been chilled but may be overstated.

This leads to the following: how do all major brewing companies carbonate their beers if they don't natural carbonate? Someone who was worked for them said something alongside "beer already comes carbonated out of the fermenter" which led me to believe they were using LoDo, so that doesn't apply. If they do carbonate and botlle cold and then all the unrefrigerated boxes I've seen lead to the realization that I have been tasting once-cool-now-warmed beer all this time.

(insert sudden realization meme)

 

[day_trippr]

Fermented beer will definitely have some level of carbonation - all that CO2 bubbling through the beer column is just what wasn't absorbed. The level will be temperature dependent - the warmer the beer is before packaging the less CO2 it can hold - but you can count on a handful of tenths of a volume unless you heat up the beer (don't do that )

I expect most breweries carbonate in a bright tank, and of that group most probably use an array of CO2 stones to carbonate. And there's likely a smaller subset that transfers to a bright tank with a handful of fermentation points remaining and do a grown-up version of spunding. Finally there's a whole 'nuther group that actually do bottle conditioning.

I have always heard the same dictate that warming a cold beer before chilling it back to serving temperature is deleterious to said beer. I don't think I've ever subjected a beer to such treatment, but I'm sure I've been the recipient of such a beer. But I wouldn't have been aware of its history, so I can't confirm or refute that belief...

Cheers!