Kegging versus bottling, two years in

Bottling day used to take a whole afternoon: sanitising forty bottles, priming sugar, capping, and two weeks of waiting. Kegging takes twenty minutes and the beer is drinkable in three days.

The trade-off is gear and space. A kegerator, a CO2 bottle and a regulator cost more than the rest of my equipment combined, and kegs do not travel to a friend's house as easily as a six-pack.

I still bottle a few from each batch with a counter-pressure filler for sharing and for tasting how a beer ages. Everything else goes in the keg.