Brewing the same beer for a year

It's a neat idea. When you make changes resist the urge to change more than one parameter at a time. That way you can properly evaluate the results from that change.

 

It's a great idea, and it's essentially how I arrived at the recipes for the five brews I've made on a regular basis for the last few decades. I've always been less interested in brewing a new, different beer every time, instead focusing on the handful of "styles" I know I enjoy (while tweaking them along the way to my personal taste). Also, once you get to know your processes and ingredients, the realization that malts and hops and be substituted when necessary with readily available alternative types and still maintain the overall essential character of most brews.

 

What size batches? I don't know how anybody could drink the same beer all year? No offense, but that sounds awful.
To each their own though. If you enjoy it, that's all that matters. Personally, I like nothing more than trying to take on a new style of beer for the first time.

Btw... if after a year, you still haven't got it down, might want to look into a new hobby. Just kidding. Good luck!

 

I applaud your dedication because this sounds really daunting to me. I brew 2-3 times a month so f it were me, I'd probably rotate two or three styles throughout the year, working towards perfecting each. That way you'd have a variety of things to drink while perfecting your process and recipe. Cheers

 

I plan a fairly similar experiment. Perhaps not one beer all year long, but I have a couple beers that I want to be "my beers" and want to get them just right so will brew them a couple different ways and then pick what I like best and make the final recipe. Good luck and I hope you get what you want. That is the reason I started to home brew, and I intend to make it so through the same process.

 

Maybe when you develop a more concrete lists of variables to tweak, you can run parallel "experiments" whenever possible. For example, do a trial where you mash grain bill "X", get 5 gallons of wort, then split it into 2 kettles. You could use the same hop bill in both kettles but tweak timing of additions to see how that influences hop taste/aroma in the same batch, etc., etc.

Good luck!

 

Sounds interesting, good luck with it

 

That was my thought too. There's a few batches I've made which, after a few bottles, I was convinced that I was going to want more. So I quickly got another 5 gallon batch in the pipeline. However, by the time I finished the last bottle of the first batch, I found that despite how much I liked it to begin with, I was sort of sick of it, but now I had two more cases to drink up.

It also reminds me of the guy from Iowa a couple years ago who decided to do a traditional "beer fast" like many monks used to do. He consumed nothing but home-brewed doppelbock for 40 days. By the end of Lent, he didn't think he'd ever be able to drink another doppelbock again.

 

I've only brewed one beer for about 2 years. A dry hopped cali common that I just posted a recipe for in the recipes tab. It's just too solid. I change up the dry hops most times but it's already a great beer that I love. I do it less because I'm trying to master it and more because it's the best combination of easy to brew & perfectly in line with my tastes. If I want something different I buy a pro's.