Homebrewing New Year's Resolutions

Integrate recipes where the batch size limit (from 1-n) approaches 0.

 

1. Brew more.
2. Brew a hoppy beer that I'm happy with.
3. Work out a good Flanders Red or Oud Bruin recipe and start my single barrel solera.

 

Don't get to close, Icarus.

 

1. Rebrew. Want to try to nail some recipes.

2. Start my sour pipeline.

 

I've been brewing for 20 years, off and on, but there are still a few things I haven't stepped up to doing, and would like to...

1. Make yeast starters
2. Wash/reuse yeast from previous batches
3. Harvest and start my own wild yeast strains for sour/wild beer batches

Besides the yeast side of things,
4. Get a second keezer for my sour/wild brews (current set up can only hold 5 kegs, which I keep filled already)
5. Make my first mead

 

1. Build a keezer (need more taps for MOAR Citra!!!), I also want to turn my current kegerator into a fermentation chamber instead of my current son of a fermentation chamber
2. Repeat and perfect a recipe (I can almost never brew the same beer twice without some kind of tweaking)
3. Learn water chemistry and build the correct profiles for different styles (been putting this off until I buy a house since I have been moving almost yearly and just get too lazy to deal with getting water reports)

 

get a barrel...
start a solera.

 

Graduate

 

1. Experiment (For to long I've been, holding myself back)
2. Consistently Take measurments
3. More brews, once one is done not waiting to i have just have few beers left to start the next
4. Take risk
5. Take risk
6. Take risk.....

 

1. Just start kegging, already!
2. Attend more home brew meetings
3. Brew more frequently
4. Wash yeast from previous batches

 

was going to try for one of the 4 "Major Awards" at NHC. Haven't come up with something better yet so I'll go with that for now.

 

Temp control, Temp control, Temp control and get rid of my old hops.

 

Just made the jump this past batch and LOVE it! It is the best decision I made since moving up to all-grain.

 

1. happy new year
2. uniformity
3. more fermentation space.
4. electric control mash temp

 

#3 should be on the top of your list.

 

I agreen, kegging is great and I think its one of the best things I have decided to do for homebrewing but temp control is way more important and ranks way ahead of kegging in terms of better beer production.

 

Brew more, and get a yearly schedule of certain styles for the season.
More sours, keep my pipeline going!
Get my single tier stand set up, which will help me brew more.

 

(1) Figure out how to keep my 4 kegs continuously filled. It seems like several kegs always kick within a very short time span, leaving me with less than ideal libation choices. Guess this means I need to brew more often...

(2) Settle on a few more house beers in addition to my American Brown. I think I got pretty close with my last APA and IPA (both made with Ringwood yeast, which I have decided I really like). I do need to dial back the alcohol on the IPA just a tad to get it into IPA rather than IIPA territory. Or maybe I don't; it is a great beer as brewed. I think I was close with last year's Bo Pils recipe also.

 

1. Fill my 55 gallon sour barrel to start the sour solera project. Currently its swelled with water.
2. Fine tune using blickmann beer gun. Used it a few times, but I still feel a little clunky with it.
3. Lay more bigger beers down this year. Quad, big chewy impy stout, more meads, barleywine, wheatwine.....
4. Attend some brew club meetings.

 

Oh, I know. But kegging is sexier, and I also helped choose that particular Christmas present, so I know I'll have the hardware before long. That said, I also put a temperature controller on my list, and with a little luck I'll have one of those soon, too.

Man, I'm going to need another fridge.