2023 was another year with tons of non-brewing things happening in life, so my brew days were pretty important opportunities for relaxation.

• Favorite Batch
  • American Pale Ale 2023 was a killer batch! It was just a straight-down-the-middle pale ale, which hit every note for a traditional take on the style. I would drink it every day (if that was a good idea).
  • Live Oak Canyon Ale was a close second…it was incredibly drinkable, and an interesting beer in a hard-to-find style.
• Least Favorite Batch
  • Thanksgiving Transatlantic Barleywine wasn’t a bad batch, but I should have let it age another year. So, even though it was still reasonably drinkable, I will mark it down as “least favorite.”
• Experimental Recipe With Most Potential
  • Live Oak Canyon Ale (again!). I had such a fun time with this beer, and the introduction of wood into the mix was a nice experimental twist. I would brew this again in a second.
• Most Fun New Style/Recipe to Try
  • I enjoyed brewing a Czech dark lager; it was fun to try out some new ingredients and go fairly traditional in this beer.
• Upcoming Beer With Most Potential
  • I just kegged a Sierra Nevada Porter clone recipe, and I think it’s going to be pretty great! Porters are such a hard style to find nowadays, so I always enjoy making them. It’s funny how they have basically disappeared from the landscape, which emphasizes why homebrewing is so important.
• Best Ingredient Added to Repertoire
  • Wood! I enjoyed my revisit to wood aging with Live Oak Canyon Ale (yet again). I don’t want every beer to be wood aged, but I had forgotten how a straight-up wood (rather than spirit-barrel-aged) character can be nice.
• Favorite Books
  • The Hops List book was a surprisingly great addition to my beer and brewing library. Because it’s just a…list…of hops, it rewards dipping in and out of the pages, and doesn’t need a sequential exploration. It’s probably one of the more useful books I’ve got, and certainly one of my most-used ones during the past year.
• Overall Stats
  • I made 22 batches during the year, totaling approximately 100 gallons of beer.
  • Around a third (8) of my batches were some form of lager, which is an increase from 2022. Nearly a third (7) were some form of pale ale (IPA, Belgian pale ale, or American pale ale).
  • My most frequently brewed styles were American Pale Ale (four batches) and German pils (three batches).