I recently started kegging, roughly 6 batches ago. Initially I would keg two batches and place them in the refridgerator, waiting two weeks for them to carbonate "naturally" (as opposed to "forced" carbonation) before I began drinking them.
Then the thought occurred to me that when I bottled, I still waited two weeks, but the bottles were at room temperature and not at 40 degrees in my refrigerator, as were my kegs. From what I remembered, beer which you let sit for a while in a bottle gets better as it ages because the yeast is still active and conditioning at room temperature.
For my next two batches that I was to keg, I then decided to leave the kegs and CO2 tank outside of the refrigerator for the two weeks of natural carbonation such that they could condition while at room temperature, instead of in the fridge.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, however, would result in the belief that kegging is inferior to bottling in regards to conditioning. After two weeks, I put the kegs back in the fridge, where the yeast become inactive and thus stop conditioning the beer. With bottling, I leave the bottles on a shelf for however long it takes me to drink all of the bottles. I simply move some bottles into the refrigerator several hours before I drink. And because I typically have 5 batches bottled at any given time, a single batch can last a long time if I rotate between each batch.
Am I correct in thinking that if you keg a batch and store it in the fridge (or store all your bottles from a batch in the fridge) halt conditioning? Am I simply mistaken? Does conditioning, or the process by which aging beer makes it taste better, have nothing to do with yeast -- or does the yeast in a keg at 40*F continue to condition the beer?
