Does the type of gas used for the keg affect taste at all or is it just having those beautiful little bubbles and mouth feel that makes the difference??
I want to brew a stout but not if the taste is spoiled or lessened by the CO2 gas for my keg.
Not really understanding your question? There’s two things you can put it on co2 or nitro. Serve all of my stout on co2 .
many irish stouts are carbonated with co2. it won’t harm the beer to use co2 to carbonate.
the flavor should be the same either way, although the different methods of carbonating will cause a very different mouthfeel that may cause you perceive the flavor differently. either method will work fine.
CO2 is the only option to carbonate. If you want to dispense the beer with a CO2/N mix then the nitrogen will knock the CO2 bubbles out giving it a nice creamy head and nice mouth feel. Using the mix to carbonate will work but I find it a better use of the mixed gas just to serve.
A “creamer” faucet will do a nice job without using N. Look on Ebay for a Guinness, Murphy’s or similar tap. Hard to beat the mixed gas on a nice Stout though.
Wanted to add most stouts you buy are on Co2 unless they say nitro on the bottle which gives them a creaminess but no real carbonation.
You can get a fairly creamy mouthfeel in a stout without the beer gas.
Making your stout without beer gas available is fine.
One thing to add though is that carbonnation level can affect some characteristics. (Assuming you may use a higher level when not intending to use a Nitrogen system)
Lower Carb level will smooth out bitterness and enhance perception of sweetness.
Higher level will mast sweetness and bring out the bitterness.
Suggestion: I would simply not overdo the bitterness in the dry stout if you know it won’t be served on nitrogen. Should be fine.
I’ve found that a turbulent, high pressure dispense results in glass of stout that compares quite well to a mixed gas dispense (especially, as someone has already pointed out, if you use a “stout” faucet)
In fact, since I dislike highly carbonated ales to begin with, I serve all of my homebrews in this manner. The result is close enough to a nitro dispense…so close that I was never able to justify the expense of setting up a nitro system for my homebrew setup.
I won’t say that I’ll never go the mixed gas route, only that thus far I’ve found no pressing need for it, based on the above.
Thanks to all for all of the information. I guess my next batch of beer will be an Irish stout of some kind. I know that this is not St. Patricks day but if I had to wait for just once a year to drink Stout, life would not be very interesting. Besides St. Patricks day is my birthday.
