Bottle Conditioning - Effect on Yong Beer?

[Buttwidget]

I bottled a couple of brews today, and a question occurred to me around what I was going to experience over the next few weeks. I thought I would pose it to the BN Army...

I keg my beer, force carb it, and then dispense from the keg. I bottle when I need to share beer, or enter a competition. I had 4 kegs of beer that needed to be bottled, and since I use the Blichmann Beer Gun (which requires setup and takedown/cleaning time) I decided to bottle all of those beers today while I had some free time. One of the beers was a very young Hefe. It needs another week or two until it will be ready for consumption. It was fully carbonated, but needed a little more time to mellow. I made the decision to bottle it anyway. After listenting to the Staling show on Brew Strong, I started wondering if bottling might prevent the beer from evolving into the wonderful flavors that I'm used to. I am very 'type-a' about sanitation, only use new bottles, and I fill the bottle with CO2 prior to filling. As a matter of fact, my beer isn't exposed to O2 at all after I oxygenate my wort on brew day.

The question is, will beer quality only degrade after bottling, or can the flavor improve if a young (fully fermented) beer is properly bottled and properly handled after bottling? Remember, this isn't a high gravity Belgian, this is one of those short-shelf life Hefes....

~widget

[brewinhard]

As far as hefe's are concerned, I typically try to finish a 5 g. keg of mine in no more than 1 mos. I too use the beer gun and find that even with the best practices that oxygen can still take hold in a beer. I know this b/c I use my beer gun to bottle sour beers. Over the course of 4 mos I have noticed pellicle formation between the beer and headspace interface forming over time. Pellicles are formed due to the presence of oxygen in the bottle's headspace and produced by the wild yeast and bacteria.

Getting back to your question, I think that if you are transferring a young yeasty hefe from keg to bottle with the beergun than you are going to benefit from the yeast in the bottle as they will scavenge a lot of oxygen that may have ingressed during the packaging. I still do not think the beer will improve much more. It will get to a peak point within a few weeks then quickly drop off especially if not kept close to freezing.