2013 reflections: Take some time with this one!

Achievements: Became a grandfather; I'll be teaching my granddaughter to brew in 6 or 7 years (when I can get her away from my wife's riding lessons).

Quasi-embarrassment: Failed to take the gold in cat. 16, Belgian & French ales, at the Greg Noonan Memorial competition for the first time in 5 years. My saison took 2nd to the eventual (close) BOS runner-up. I shall return...

Proud Brews: The bourbon-vanilla porter I made for my wife. It will prevent many comments about money spent on brew toys.

New Years' Resolution: Really get into sours.

 

Wow! You must make some awesome saison. Take back your crown in 2014!

 

Being able to steal ideas from Shaun Hill doesn't hurt...

 

Should have been "ideas & yeast".

 

After giving this little to no thought...
Things I am proud of... no drain pours or ruined batches. Started the year doing extract batches with a minimash in my oven and boiling the concoctions in a 7.5 gallon turkey fryer. My extract apa took gold with a 35, and my extract imperial stout scored a 40 but didn't place. Went all grain on fathers day, and got about ten batches under my belt so far. My second saison took third in a local belgian only comp. My worst beers have suprised me after bottle conditioning. The first one being an imperial brown (brown porter?) That tasted pretty bland after a month in bottles shaped up to be a wonderful chocolate bomb a few months later. The first brett saison I brewed fermented out in the 80's and threw a metric hit ton of bannana and clove phenols after sitting way too long on some blueberry puree. After sitting in the bottles for six months I cracked one christmas eve to find out that this stuff is divine. I've learned how to tinker and think out my recipes to hit pretty damned close to what I am aiming for, and that is the best I could hope for. Next year, more brewing. Hopefully I can get a brew stand built, and maybe start kegging. But whatever. I just want to brew.
And hopeefully things slow down enough for me to get this package out to al...

 

So Stone stole your recipe (or at least plagiarized it)?

 

In the past year, nothing too out of the ordinary has happened. Moving to a new city threw a wrench in the works, as I had gotten very used to how I brewed in my apartment in Philly, and the water there as well. Much different layout of the kitchen here, water is much harder, and I've been tinkering with overnight mashing as well since the move. Looking to get it all down pat in the next year. Nothing too embarrassing, just some beers that I gave the Dogfish Head treatment. Still drinkable, but things that I would much rather have done a 1gal batch instead of 5. Which I will start doing in the next year. Also looking to play around with brett a bit. I've also resolved to brew a hoppy beer every other beer I do, as they are my favorite, I've got a lot of hops in the freezer, and not having some sorta of (insert whatever the adjective of week is)-IPA available really sucks. Maybe try to do three full batches of cider next fall to keep the old lady happy, as two batches tends to run out by the following fall. Definitely want to join a club again, I miss that a lot.

As weird as it sounds to say on a homebrewing forum, I also want to try to drink more commercial beer, as I've been living in a bit of a vacuum the past year or so, only drinking homebrews.

 

It's basically the same beer I entered into their comp. I didn't supply a recipe for it though.

 

Entered our "local" national BJCP comp and medaled 3 beers: my first lager, Dopplebock, took 1st in Bocks, my 2nd lager, Pils, took 3rd in Pils, and my first kegged beer, IPA, took 2nd in category. I drilled my 2 new kettles and put in sight glass, thermometer, and ballvalve in each one. Did my first ever decoction when my mash temp came in 15*F low. Got a pump and whirlpool chiller running. Brewed 16 beers, did mostly double batches (IPA & Black IPA, Pils & Saison, Imp Red IPA & Oud Bruin, CAP & IPL, White ISA & Brett ISA), moved to overnight mashing. Joined the COC team in my brew club, judged and hosted a few COCs, and judged in the BJCP comp I placed in (not my beers though). Started culturing up more yeasts. Built a hop oast and packaged over 3# of hops. Finished my brewery logo, started kegging, moved my beer fridge inside and all my glassware which starts my move toward an entertainment room.

I also put together a club brewoff with a local brewery where the brewery gave us a mystery wort and 7 of us had to come up with a recipe on the spot and brew it there, then bring it back in 8 weeks for a taste off. Fairly enjoyable event. It was my first time using my new kettle and it leaked, then it clogged after the chill, and the beer is way over carbed and doesn't taste very good.

I've made some really good beers, bog hop bombs, a couple Brett only. Twas a good year.

 

Once school started back up, I really didn't get a chance to keep up or contribute much.

I find the better and more consistent I get at brewing, the more difficulties/$/input is required to make the improvements in my system.

I have been peicing together a self contained brew stand, pump box, and storage rack for outside car port. The stand can be stood on its side and all equipment stored nested inside and covered with a custom tarp my M-I-L sewed for me. The worst part of my brew day was getting everything out of the shed and then waiting to put everything back up.

I have put together a brew stand that will accommodate the 14gal kettle that is on its way in the spring. I also built a pump box around a pelican box. It has built-in GFCI, a slick 120v input, and 3 duplex outlets (one with USB charging, one regular, and one switch for march pump control). The pump slides out of some holes I drilled and plugged with rubber stoppers. This is an older pic but I have adjusted it so that I have stainless valve to throttle with.

2 gold medals for our local BJCP sanctioned Germanfest (39 & 40 for a Vienna lager and an Oktoberfest).

I got into lagers this year and am about to embark on a rotation that supplies a constant supply of beer (having a keg on tap while fermenting another lager at 48F).

No drain pours this year out of 10 batches.

I got invited to my first team brew day. And got an invitation to my first brew club meeting.

For someone like me, sort of in the craft beer desert, I can't explain thoroughly enough how beneficial BA and it's forum contributors have been.

 

This was my first year where every batch was all-grain, full kettle boil. I bought a grain mill at the end of 2012 and finally started leveraging the lower cost of bulk grain as well. I also wrote more of my own recipes this year, having done mostly clone recipes of known beers I liked up until this year.

For 2014 I resolve not to slack off on making yeast starters. Nothing was ruined, but I am pretty sure I didn't step up enough on some of the bigger beers, and they could have been better as a result.

 

Brewed with wild yeast for the first time. Inocculated wort with overipe blackberries. Resulting beer was sour, with an aroma that could be politely descibed as funky. Visited Cantillon Brewery to try a sour for the first time and was greeted with the same funky smell.

 

Proudest: Made my first lager that I am REALLY happy with.
Weirdest: Made a Gose with squid ink.
Worst idea: Tried to open ferment a hefe. Tasted like a gym bag.
Most shameful: Accidentally donated an infected batch to charity.

Resolutions: Build a better wort chiller.

 

Finished my first full calendar year of brewing. Brewed 28 batches. Almost all of them turned out well. Even the 1 or 2 that I wasn't happy with weren't drain pours. Brewed a citrus hopped saison that was one of my favorites. Will probably be my first rebrew with minor adjustments.

Added temp control and an O2 system early in the year and noticed immediate improvements in quality. Not having to mess around with a swamp cooler and shake my fermenter for O2 was worth the investment alone.

Got my process down really well now. My brew days are more effcient with less running around like an idiot. I have also chilled out a lot when it comes to the small things. I used to freak out when things didn't go exactly as planned. I am still very careful with sanitation and following my process but I don't worry as much about things like how many bubbles I get from my airlock.

 

My biggest accomplishment this year was getting a kegging system up and running, with a CO_2 tank on the outside and up to three (or possibly four) kegs on the inside of the beer fridge, as shown below.

I also got my rolling brew-kettle cart built, also shown below.

Altogether I brewed 10 batches (5 gallons): 4 IPAs, 2 Pilsners, 1 Cz Dark lager, 1 Koelsch, 1 Hoppy American Wheat, and 1 American Brown Ale. Of these, the APA IPA was the most awesome. I'll definitely brew it again this coming year. Thanks, Vikeman!

I also decided to learn about water, specifically how to control mash pH. Most of what I know I learned by reading Kai Troester's blog (highly recommended) and deciphering several available spreadsheets for calculating mash pH. To put it all together (in my mind) I ended up writing two papers on the subject and developing my own spreadsheet for calculating mash pH. Here is a link to this stuff, for those interested. Since then I've been reading Water and A.J. DeLange's latest writings on the subject. (I have to say that A.J. is THE MAN with regards to this subject.) To be honest though, for me the jury is out on the benefit of worry about anything beyond (i) does my water taste good? and (ii) removing chlorine/chloramines.

To all Homebrewing BA'ers, Happy Brewing in 2014!

 

It's been a really good brewing year for me as well.

Accomplishments:

• Resumed brewing after a 15-year hiatus
• Moved to all-grain after my fist batch
• Built a temperature controller for my fermentation refrigerator
• Each batch has been an improvement over the last!

Lessons learned:

• Whew... and I think the crystal police will agree with me on this... there is such a thing as too much crystal in your recipe. My first batch this year was an extract dunkel weizen I designed, where most of my color came from crystal malt... well... eeewwwww..... Drinkable, but not anything close to what I wanted. Ain't making THAT mistake again. There is a place for crystal in brewing (my last brew was a Raging Bitch clone with 5% Crystal 60, and is pretty darn tasty)... just gotta learn where to draw the line.
• I will not ever brew a recipe that maxes out the limits of my gear. It's just simply too stressful when you realize that yes, you can mash it... but then have to swap around several different pots of varying capacity to finally get the mash lautered and back into your original pot to begin boiling. I sadly lost a half gallon of wort in the process because I simply had no place for it....

Plans for 2014:

• Invest in some new equipment to remove some of my bottle-necks in my process. First thing is a 10-gallon mash tun!
• Brewing a lager. I'm itching for an Oktoberfest.
• Trying different mashing techniques: step mashing for my next hefeweizen (NO CRYSTAL THIS TIME) and decoction mashing for the Oktoberfest.
• Maybe enter a competition to see how my beers do. I get lots of feedback from friends, but being my own worst critic, I've not been truly happy with any of my efforts this year - there's always SOMETHING about the beer that bugs me!
• Try different base malts. I have consistently used what my LHBS refers to as "American Pal Ale 2-row", and my beers have all had a similar flavor in the profile I'm not entirely jazzed about, and after three batches with same flavor... I think it's the base malt. Each beer has been a different style... too much of a coincidence!

And lastly, thanks to al fellow BA's and a happy new year to all!

 

Any clue where this thread is? I'd like to post to it then favorite it so I can come back from time to time and see how I have progressed. I should probably do both a 20-13 in review and 20-14 forecast post on my blog for this too...

 

wow you guys brewed a lot and have such nice equipment/upgrades. 2012 was a better year for brewing than 2013, I got to brew on my university's pilot brewery 30gal every other week.
2013 I brewed only 3 or 4 batches. mostly my house wheat and cali common. I taught my friend to brew, and we totally effed a beer up with pot smoking and bleach. One of the bottles may or may not have contained bleach in it and so we were basically too paranoid to drink the rest. They were probably fine and the one I had tasted great (there was mango in it) but it kinda takes the fun out of drinking homebrew if there is a chance you may get poisoned-- it got drainpoured, a full 5gallons... so sad. Also made an apple pomegranate mead that was alright but I mostly use to cook. I live in an apartment with electric elements on my stove so Im still doing partial boils with partial mashes, once I get another place I will do some upgrading.
Just brought the last bit of my latest down for the holidays and it had a great reception so thats good. My friends dad got spoiled and now doesnt want any commercially brewed stuff while I'm still in stock.