2025 was a decent year for brewing; I focused in part on perfecting classic styles, in addition to returning to a few standby recipes. I feel that I know my brewing system pretty well and have been learning the mash and recipe formulation techniques to get to my destination. Interestingly, I was at nearly 100 percent dry yeast during the past year–I might try one or two liquid yeast varieties for particular batches, but in the end the variety and convenience of dry yeast can’t be beat.

• Favorite Batch(es)
  • Mountain Town Stout was phenomenal, and (surprisingly) my first American stout.
  • AquiloPils was supremely enjoyable, probably in large part because of the story behind it.
• Least Favorite Batch
  • 2025 didn’t have any absolute disasters, but I can say my Old Speckled Hen homage still needs some work.
• Experimental Recipe With Most Potential
  • Steve’s Cali-Belgique IPA Homage came out well, and I know there is so much more I can do with it.
  • Mosaic SMaSH Pale Ale wasn’t close to my best, but with some tweaking it can be a winner.
• Most Fun New Style/Recipe to Try
  • Salty One Gose was amazing, and I think it will be even better when I dial it in more.
• Upcoming Beer With Most Potential
  • Six-Shooter Abbey Singel is a Belgian ale clocking in around 6.7% abv; it’s still conditioning, but I’ll put it on tap soon!
• Best Ingredient/Technique Added to Repertoire
  • This was the year of small batches, following my “Brew Year’s Resolution” of doing more small batch beers. This was greatly facilitated by adding an Anvil Foundry 6.5 to my equipment range. This smaller Foundry makes it so easy to do <5 gallon batches, which in turn has encouraged me to brew more often on this system. I’ve really enjoyed trying a bigger spectrum of styles; in many cases, 2.5 gallons is the absolutely perfect quantity.
  • Isaria 1924 malt was super fun to try, and I like how it tasted. I’ll be doing more with this!
• Favorite Books / Publications
  • This year I started a subscription to Craft Beer & Brewing, and it has been a fantastic addition to my homebrew reading routine. The articles tend to focus a bit more on the commercial brewing side, but there are also tons of interesting style profiles. They also highlight lots of interesting homebrew scale recipes, and I’ve enjoyed brewing several. I still love Zymurgy and BYO (now sadly only in online form), but Craft Beer & Brewing brings something different.
• Overall Stats
  • 24 batches
    • 8 were “half batches” (between 2.5 and 3 gallons)
    • I feel like I did a really good job of branching out into new styles, or styles I haven’t brewed much previously; this includes gose, American brown ale, American stout, Belgian single, and others.