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How much time does kegging cut off from suggested ready time?
I read on kits about the time it takes the brewing process to be ready to drink. Usually it's 4-6 weeks for ale, and 6 weeks to 8 months for heavy ales and lagers. Do these times have bottling aging incorpated into them? If so, how much time would kegging and force carbonating cut off from the whole process?
Kegging will basically cut off about 2 weeks or so. After your beer is ready for keg or bottle, it takes about 3 weeks for the bottle to carb properly and begin conditioning. If that same beer were kegged then force carbed, it will be ready and perfect in about a week. You can quick carb and have the beer able to consume in hours, but a nice week to 2 on gas makes a more balanced carb level, good head, and forcefully mellows it out some. A 2 week old keg to me is the equivalent of a 2 month bottle condition. So it saves about 2 weeks to be drinking it, but overall produces a more ready to drink beer much sooner if that makes sense?
In my short experience, kegging can save a few weeks as thirsty said. It seems to sort of condition and carb up at the same time, vs. carbing with sugar, then conditioning. You can drink a really good beer a couple hours after force carbing, or a great beer after about a week. Plus with a little extra hardware you can bottle off of a keg.
Yeah, kegging is a great way to be able to have beer ready sooner.
You can also easily play with carbonation levels.
Once you start kegging it will also let you change up your brewing practices.
The normal 1-2-3 rule (primary-secondary-bottling) gets left behind.
Better beer can be made more easily by just going 2 weeks in the primary then right to keg. The only time that a beer goes into a secondary fermentor in my brewhouse is when I want to add something else like fruit or spices.
I also have a spare keg that I use as a bright beer tank. I have trimmed a 1-1/2 inches off the out tube so that I can put beer from primary in that tank, let all the stuff settle out, then I transfer underpressure to a clean keg the beer then is nearly sediment free!
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