Thinking about next step

[Sathington Willoby]

Kegging... As soon as you start kegging, you'll find yourself brewing a lot more often. It saves so much time and headache.

[trouble brewin]

I am going to buck the trend and recommend all-grain. The reason being that all-grain will give you much more control over the process and quality of the beer. As far as beer quality goes, kegging will only help you adjust carbonation, while all-grain will allow greater flexibility in recipe creation and control over fermentability and mouthfeel.

I started all-grain brewing 3 years ago and have been kegging for the last year. I'll whole-heartedly agree that the kegging process is simpler and quicker than bottling, but I still find myself bottling many batches. I end up kegging the beers that I want to drink fresh and turn over quickly. However, I've been brewing a lot of Belgian style beers and other high alcohol beers that I want to lay down for a while and enjoy over the course of several years. Bottles become a lot less expensive than kegs, when you are committing that much time to a batch of beer. You can reuse bottles each time that you free one up, but you can't use the remaining 4 gallons of space in a keg with only 1 gallon left in it.

[dannypo]

If I must choose from the two choices you gave I would say legging. It saves do much time.

My suggestion would be temperature control. Get a used fridge and a digital controller and I guarantee you will make better beer.

[blinddog]

God help me I wanted to say all grain, but damn it is nice to have beer on tap. And by nice I mean kegs make it really easy to get drunk and ignore the wife. Go for kegs.

[Brew Askew]

Thanks for all the info, there were some things that I didn't think about.

While I would love to have draft beer on tap at the house I am the only one in the house who drinks beer and we rarely have people over. I may wait on the kegging a little longer. We are thinking of moving in the next year or so, maybe I will setup a something at the new place.

As far as all grain goes, I like the idea of having more control over everything, but having not watched anyone do an all grain batch worries me a little. I will have to find someone who is doing it and join them for a brew day to see what I am getting myself into.

One more question. I just made a milk stout, how long would it be good in the bottles with the yeast? Is the yeast a concern as well with kegging? Do you need to filter if you are kegging?

Still new, guess I still have a lot to learn.

[JakeAndBake]

Ooooh, good question man. I've been looking at taking the next step myself. I think I'm leaning towards going all-grain, because honestly I've got enough free time to justify washing some bottles (and catch up on the BN while I do it usually). If you don't mind washing bottles (and I seriously don't, it's only like an hour out of my day anyways, and that's with labels) I'd go all-grain.

I mean, costwise, it's no question for me. All-grain is the cheaper way. My all-grain upgrade could cost me as little as fifty bucks. I just need to convert a cooler to get there, and I've already got a good cooler for the job. Add in a 10 gallon brew pot and that's another hundred bucks, but hey, when I wanna go ten gallon, that brew pot could be my HLT for a while. With kegging, you gotta buy a kegging system ($150-$200), a fridge ($100+). and a tap system for your fridge. Oh, and a temp control unit, which is $50-$80.

I've been doing a lot of research the past week or two on taking my next step, and I'm totally going all-grain. For me it's a matter of frugality, so for now I'm going with the cheaper option....

[scotchpine]

Go for it man! That's the route I took and I'm glad I did. Just remember, unless you already got one, you'll need a chiller and a way to bring 7 gallons to a boil.

[beerdrinker]

Go kegging plus Brew In A Bag (easy start into All Grain). Once you get BIAB down, you can move to full out all greain if you want