I recently starting brewing more and more lagers and I’m running into a storage quandry. I keg all of my beers and counterpressure fill to bottles for parties and competitions. I want to age some of my bigger beers (doppelbock, dunkel, etc.) to see how the flavors develop over 6 months to a year. I could keep the beer in kegs but I only have so much cold space. Would bottling the beers to, keep 4-6 of each kind on hand in the fridge, cause them to age differently than they would in the keg? My main concern is that sediment will accumulate in each bottle and then be roused if I were to enter into any competitions.
I think that would be fine. I don’t find a lot of sediment in bottles filled from a keg. That being said, it’s also fine to leave it in the keg it doesn’t need to be cold, just not hot.
Either way would work fine and it would depend on your storage capability, I would assume a few bottles is easier than full kegs:) The cold storage will yield you a crystal clear beer over less time than cellar temps or above but either way is fine.
If the beer is clear going into the bottles, there is no reason it won’t be equally clear, or clearer coming out.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I’m going to bottle finish up the rest of my Doppelbock (tastes great) but bottle a few before it’s totally gone. I’ll throw those in the back of the fridge and forget about them.