When I buy these 5 liter mini kegs am I really serving something different than bottled beer? Is the beer any different? Or is it really just beer in a can and nothing more? Is the beer in the 5 liter keg better than bottle or not as good?
Opinions please.
To tell ya the truth, I don't know. It *seems* like the Warsteiner or Grolsch(the only 2 5L party cans available here) taste better than from the bottles, though they still are very mediocre beers no matter how you serve them. Could be a psychological thingy, I suppose. It'll be interesting to see others' comments on this.
Best regards, Bill
AFAIK it's "just" beer in a big can. Though some big breweries (e.g., Anheuser-Busch) will pasteurize canned/bottled beer while not pasteurizing (full-sized) kegs, I seriously doubt minikegs get any different treatment from single-serving bottles and cans.
-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots
"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant
Not necessarily. It would depend on the beer. Some kegs are force carbonated while bottles obviously can't be. Carbonation can affect appeal of a beer. I've had some beers where the carbonation attacks your tongue as soon as you drink it. Not smooth at all. Basically.. there is a difference in process between keg and bottles. It's more prevalent in home brews where you add corn sugar to your batch before you bottle which when the bottles are capped (no oxygen) the beer inside the bottle gets carbonation from the sugar. A homebrew put in a keg (cornelus or other) can be force carbonated thus not needing sugar.
Force-carbonating kegs is not standard industry practice -- they may (and often do) carbonate the beer before packaging but the beer going into bottles or kegs is essentially identical. Variations in CO2 levels are really part of the recipe and have nothing to do with the manner in which beers are carbonated. As a homebrewer using kegs, that was an easy thing to test -- side-by-side comparisons between keg-conditioning and force-conditioning resulited in beers that were, well, identical. Difference was the latter beers were ready to drink a heck of a lot sooner.
Brewers know that CO2 levels dramatically alter the perception of the beer and commercial brewers know exactly what the levels are in their packaged beers, whether keg or bottles. They may be different, but it's a deliberate difference.
Given that mini-kegs are shelved, I'd say the answer to the original question was clear: they're just big cans.
--Jeff Frane
No, commercial bottled beer is not force-carbonated at packaging time-- that would be silly. But, aside from the few bottle-conditioned beers out there, it most definitely is carbonated before it goes into the bottles.
For almost all commercial beers, the carbonation happens pre-packaging. Especially when talking the big brewers who are more apt to use 5-L minikegs, which is what this thread is about.
Homebrew? People can brew beer at home? Hunh. Learn something every day.
-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots
"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant
Yeah, you're serving a beer in an inherently more fun and social way. You're turning a small gathering for dinner into a party.
Oh. Well, no.
A really *big* can!
Not as good, in my opinion. I still like 'em.
Glenn P.
Yeah? Who the hell are you? I don't remember seeing your name around here.
Hello everybody!
These 5 liter cans are quite usual here in Germany and available at many markets. We had a special offer in a beer shop here: 5 liter Krombacher Pilsener for 5 Euros. A fair price so we had to buy a few. We used the integrated tap (which works with gravity) but to my mind it is not to recommend. At first you nearly only get foam although we let it calm down. This is approx. the first liter. Then you have got
2.5 liters of fresh and good tasting beer (if you can say that Krombacher tastes good). We shared the can with 3 people and did not drink slowly but the last glasses were without carbondioxyde. And if you use the taps with the little CO2 canisters it is not easy to adjust and as we tried it, we emptied 2 canisters right at the beginning! So I think they are only a little party gag but no equivalent to a really draught beer. And to my mind bottled beer or even canned beer tastes better. As far as I can talk about Krombacher Pils it is the same beer as in the bottles because I asked for that during a recent brewery visit.Greetings from Germany and Prost!
Bastian
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