Bulk Aging - Better Bottle or 12oz Bottles

I'm also interested in responses. I currently use better bottles but am thinking about getting a few extra 5 gal kegs for extended aging (was thinking about just putting enough co2 in it to be purged of oxygen but not fully carbonated, but does that really matter?).

 

Bottle it up 12 oz style. That's a lot of headspace for a beer to condition with. You'll probably want to add a little more yeast by now to prime too.

Arguably it's better to bulk age, but I think beer comes out tasty both ways.

Edit: You'd be more likely to get away with this if it were a beer you would drink in the next 6 months. A porter, stout, or something malt forward. You don't want to oxidize hop forward beers and you don't want to oxidize something you'll need to cellar for the next year, like your barley wine.

 

Lots of people do this with kegs. It's just the next step in your beer pipeline and one step closer to going in your kegerator. It's not a bad idea at all. Yeast only have so much tollerance for pressure and in theory won't clean up as well in a pressurized keg as they would in a BB. I can't vouch for what degree this would be true.

 

This is what I do.. I'll do a mini bulk age in them. Purge and pop them with gas, and age there. Once I put them in line, if I'm ready to drink, or need the keg ( need more kegs! ), I will then carb, and bottle off that into the bottles and age that way. No air in them, aged, and ready to drink when I want them to be.

 

I recently re-pitched and bottled for a RIS I brewed in late July/early August and bottled 3 weeks ago (~4 months in secondary. I pitched another vial of WLP002 (same yeast strain as primary fermentation). So far, I'm really happy with it. I think it still needs a few weeks in the bottle to hit it's prime, but really happy as is.

That said, I don't think 5 weeks in secondary will require you to repitch yeast. That's not really that crazy of a secondary. You should still have enough yeast in suspension to carb your bottles. If you were talking 5 months, different story.

 

Same strain, presuming that your yeast can handle a touch more ABV. I've made the mistake of thinking that a champagne yeast would be a good idea in an RIS because of it's high alc. tolerance. It fermented drier in the bottles. It lead to a bunch of gusher bottles and thankfully no bombs. Plus, buying more yeast give you an excuse to brew again.

 

Like others, keg would be my preferred option because you can separate the beer from the yeast and provide an O2-free environment. Second option would be bottles, so I will also recommend bottling and re-yeasting (same yeast or other clean, alcohol-tolerant strain).

 

If you have access to a CO2 tank like from a paintball gun couldn't you purge the head space in the Better bottle with that? In the next few weeks I'm going to be doing my first barley wine and I was going to let it sit in my 5 gal BB for 7-8 months to age. Its a smaller bottle so hopefully there wont be much extra space but if there is I was going to use CO2 to try and flush out the excess O2.
I figure after aging for so long I'm probably going to need to re pitch yeast. Are there any sort of calculations for how much yeast to re-pitch before bottling? Also are there any special precautions I need to take before extended aging?