My issue is that I make bloody lovely beer and after a couple of weeks in the bottle it tastes great, looks good, is well carbonated and I couldn't ask for more. Unfortunately, I find it fades stupidly quickly. In most cases, this is just that it loses a lot of its taste and aroma after three to four weeks in the bottle. In other cases however, particularly when I've used a load of dry-hops (NEIPA stylee), it not only fades taste wise, it also starts to look rather 'brown'. Big disappointment this weekend (and hence the keg quest) when I had family visiting and pulled out a few bottles of what had been a really lovely, very hoppy IPA only to find it was now rather bland and was looking the wrong shade of golden. This was brewed on 6th April and would have been bottled around the 20th, so it's had about 5-6 weeks in the bottle. It's not 'off'. It doesn't taste bad. It just doesn't taste as good as it did and, from what I've read, this is generally a sign of oxygen exposure. My beers that are not as heavy on the hops do last fine and become very clear, golden and taste nice and clean so I doubt it's my cleaning/sanitation that's at fault. I've got a Citra heavy brew in the FV which is ready to bottle this weekend so I'm going to experiment by splitting the batch and cold crashing half and not the other. I'm also going to attempt to find a Soda Stream cannister to help with the bottling. I've also got my Homebrew Company basket full of kegs and taps and pipework but it's looking rather expensive and I'm yet to find a co2 supplier in the local area. I'm also a little worried that my beer consumption could really start to rocket if I had it literally 'on tap' from a keg. Is this a well recognised issue with kegging?
