Kegging and boil time new brewer questions

Northern Brewer General
1

I am a beginner Brewer and have some questions that may be the more advanced can help me with.

First, I keg my beers instead of bottle. I was wondering, if the recipe calls for 1 to 2 weeks bottling time, should I leave it in the keg for that long before tasting it. I guess what I’m asking is, is the bottling time for aging or just carbonation?

Second question, i have seen some clone recipes call for a 90 minute boil, how does that change the taste versus a 60 minute boil?

Thanks, T

2

1 it depends, are you keg conditioning or force carbing? if keg conditioning yes, you will need that time. If force carbing, no.
2 it doesn’t

3

First, no need to wait if you are force carbonating. If you use the “set it and forget it” method of setting the CO2 at 12lbs or so and just wait a couple of weeks then the timing is almost the same anyway although 3 weeks or more bottle conditioning is better IMHO.

Second for and extract beer 60 min is fine. Some extract recipes actually call for 45 min boil with just the hops then add the extract for 15. For AG sometimes 90 is better. Pilsner malt is one. 90 will also give you better hop utilization without as much flavor from the hops. You may also get carmelization darkening the beer slightly. Bottom line as I see it is that in most cases 60 works.

4

[quote=“Trapae”]
Second question, i have seen some clone recipes call for a 90 minute boil, how does that change the taste versus a 60 minute boil?

Thanks, T[/quote]

Depending on your process the extended boil can change the character and taste of your beer. As it carmelizes the wort, there is a resulting change in taste that comes along with the change in color. Same as if you carmelize sugar in the kitchen. Some styles may be difficult or impossible to create without this effect in the boil. Look up Maillard reaction for geekier info.

Also, longer boils are used in some cases to drive off DMS that can be a defect in the finished beer as well.

I’m sure there are a lot of other details that can be added, but boil time can matter in some cases. Longer boils can also be troublesome in some cases. Everything has its place.

5

Thanks