To bottle or to barrel

[kodak79]

I'm sure that in the 600+ pages of thread in this part of the forum this has been brought up before but here goes anyway.

A few months back I barreled a beer that turned out to be pretty average. It was a Bulldog Brew's Hammer of Thor, and I barreled it because my bottles were full of Grand-Cru (which I highly recommend - by BrewFerm). When I barreled it I also did a handful of bottles which turned out to be really good.

From this point I decided that from that point on I would always do a few bottles of each new brew that I barrel to compare and contrast, and ultimately make sure that I maximise the taste of my beer.

I expected that it would be likely that lagers and belgian style beers would be better in the bottle, whereas bitters and IPA's would be better in the barrel. I was surprised with my most recent brew which is a stout (Milestone Black Pearl) that so far it seems to be superior in the barrel. This might change as the weeks go by but so far I'm favouring the barrel.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on this subject to aid my selection process for coming beers. I'm about to do another Hammer of Thor and Grand-Cru for bottling only but after that I'm undecided.

Chris

 

[Dads_Ale]

Why not get a 2.5 (approx) gallon pressure barrel then you can put half in that and bottle the other half. That way you can see which works best.

 

[joe 1234567]

I gave up botteling for barreling becos i hateid botteling but it was better from the bottel then the kingkeg i used and now i use cornelius kegs better then both

 

[buzzharvey22]

Did my first 30 or so brews in bottles but my last brew, which was an all grain summer ale i made i decided to barrel (got a barrel cheap in wilko sale) just to teste. I primed the 19l (short batch) with 70g of table sugar and after 2 weeks i drew the first two pints off, it came out as about 70% froth, but after 30 seconds or so it fully settle to around 2 fingers worth of headspace and a really nice pint.

Think the trick is to not over carbonate the beers, and lubricate the seals to keep them tight. the summer ale is meant to be lightly carbed so it worked perfect.

Think my plan of action is keep my sessioning, chugging beer, probably an english bitter or so, in the keg which i know i will drink in around a month, and then bottle my lagers/ipa's to be able to get a bit more carbonation. Until my christmas bonus comes in which is getting spent on a corny keg set up :-)

Bottling is a pain in the **** like.