The new year always brings with it promises and high expectations of bettering ourselves (usually centered around the size of our stomachs). I am usually not one to make resolutions, but each year I like to assess where I am with my brewing and look ahead to where I’d like to be or things I want to try. As a new dad my time is at a premium so to move forward with my brewing I have to stay focused.
Over the past year I made a commitment to myself to be more regular when it comes to be days. I tried to gradually increase my pace to get to the point where I was brewing once every 2 weeks. This was largely my only goal in 2014: get back in the saddle after welcoming our son to the world. Despite a few lapses I was largely on schedule by year’s end (Not that you could tell by this blog. More on that later). This success and brewing regularly has me excited for the new year and what’s to come.
Without any further delay here are my goals for brewing in 2015:
- Get more involved in competitions
- Nail down a pilsner, kolsch and pale ale recipe for my system
- Fine tune my system
- Experiment with sour beers
- Be more consistent in sharing what I learn and brew here
Thankfully these goals are not mutually exclusive. Getting more involved in the competition scene will be beneficial for getting recipes right. Anytime you can get some unbiased feedback on your beer its a good thing. I want to get more involved in competitions on the judging side as well. This will help me hone my own skills for evaluating beer.
As I work through the different styles I want to push myself to try new things. Trying for the pilsner and kolsch will also challenge me as a brewer because there is nowhere to hide in these styles. I could brew IPAs and big stouts all year and never figure out that I’ve been doing something wrong the whole time. Doing more styles of beer also makes me want to dabble with sour beers. However, this is the one I’m most hesitant of due to the risk of cross contamination. I keep my equipment clean and sanitized, but the risk is still present that some bacteria could cross over to normal beers.
I have identified a few changes I want to make to my system. Most are just small tweaks that will make things go more smoothly during brew day. The biggest effect any of these will have on the beer is making fixes to my chiller. Due to how I had to mount my counterflow chiller I could not counterflow with it. Defeats the purpose, huh? A simple fitting should fix it, but I just have not taken the time to deal with it. I want to take care of this and some other small changes to the system.
Lastly, I want to be more consistent with updating this site. Part of the lag in updates was my decision to stop posting brew day recaps until I have the finished beer. This was done mostly for the beers on which I was making my first attempt. It does not help anyone to get a recipe if it turns out to be a terrible one. Documenting what I am working on and learning throughout the year will not only be helpful to me, but hopefully can help or inspire someone out there make great beer. My little way of giving back to a wonderful homebrew community that has helped me immensely.
Like normal resolutions, I’m sure this list will be fluid, but this is how I see the year right now. What are your brewing goals for 2015?