I recently picked up a keg of John’s White Ale and while we were loading it into my car, the fellow helping me mentioned something I hadn’t thought about before.
He asked me if I had tried the kegged and bottled John’s White side-by-side before. He said they were completely different beers because the beer in the keg had no oxygen permeation and was much more orange-y citrusy and the bottled version. On the other hand, the bottled version was more spicy because the bottle cap allows oxygen into the bottle,and the oxygen works with the yeast to produce a completely different beer.
I had seen this before in terms of carbonation, etc. but not to this extent. I tried it, and sure enough, he was right, and I was amazed.
Do you have any experience where two different packaging techniques create two different beers?
It was because of this that I started using the oxygen-absorbing bottle caps back when I was brewing and bottling my own. Not sure if they made a difference, but I was working incessantly to remove all the variables I could. …well, I was doing that and getting drunk. 😛
Great point! You might notice that John’s White is a screw-off type of cap, so there’s quite a bit more oxygen getting in there than even your regular pry-off type. In fact, several larger brewers, such as Founder’s and Sierra Nevada, recently switched from the twist-off to the pry-off because it made the beer taste better and more fresh. In fact, Sierra Nevada spent several years and a bunch of money studying this. They learned that the convenience of the twist-off wasn’t as much of a benefit as having great, fresh-tasting beer.