[paul739]

Hi everyone – I am hoping to get some help/advice on bottling beer with the plan to age it. I’m getting ready to make
a couple of high gravity desert beers with an ABV of around 9%. I’m going to use 500ml swing top bottles. My question is
that I feel like it would be better to bottle condition rather than force carbonate. (agree/disagree?) I am fermenting in a conical and would rather not transfer to a bottling bucket. I’ll be bottling with a counter pressure filler. My two thoughts are after I cold crash 1) add priming sugar to each bottle
and fill directly from the fermenter or 2) transfer to a keg with priming sugar which will act as a bottling bucket and bottle from there. All my transfers will be pressurized.
Any input would be appreciated. Paul

[Megary]

I don't make a lot of big beers, but when I do, I bottle straight from the fermenter spigot into bottles pre-primed with Cooper's carbonation drops.  I just use a short piece of hose from the spigot to fill from the bottom up so the beer isn't free falling the length of the bottle.  It's not sophisticated and I'm sure there's some unfavorable amount of O2 exposure.  How much of that gets taken care of by the wee bit of refermentation in the bottle and O2 scavenging caps...I don't know.  I just had a 3year old Barleywine the other night and it still has a nice, hoppy presence and really isn't showing any negative (or positive, for that matter!) signs of aging as of yet.

You did say "any input".   

[majorvices]

I like to bottle condition all of my bottled beers. Either of your options for adding priming sugar will be far superior to a bottling bucket. Adding it to the keg is probably going to be the easiest and less time intensive. You might also consider adding back in a little yeast just to be sure what you have in suspension is healthy.