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).

The year of 2022 was a bit slower in terms of brewing than some years (22 batches versus 31 last year), because things were just plain hectic. The start of 2023 was even more hectic, hence the fact that it is February before I posted the review for 2022. Even so, I got in some nice brews last year. Here is a recap!

• Favorite Batch
  • Lycorhinus Pale Ale. As the kids say, this batch slapped.
• Least Favorite Batch
  • 2022 Orange Summer Wheat Ale. So much went wrong with this batch, and by the time I sampled it from the keg, it was pretty dismal. This was a failure of equipment and technique, not recipe.
• Experimental Recipe with Most Potential
• Amber Rye Ale. I had a ton of fun creating this recipe, and it turned out amazing, too! I’m definitely brewing it again.
• Most Fun New Style/Recipe to Try
• Big Surprise Belgian Pale Ale. I didn’t expect this one to turn out as well as it did.
• Upcoming Beer With Most Potential
• I brewed a schwarzbier at the end of December, and I’m hopeful for it.
• Best Technique Added to Repertoire
• Last year was a bit boring; I didn’t really add any new techniques. I suppose that’s OK; stick with what works!
• Best Ingredient Added to Repertoire
• Although I started with it in 2021, Diamond Lager yeast became my go-to for lagers in 2022. It’s such a great dry yeast — head and shoulders above dry versions of 34/70, which leave a bit of a tartness I don’t care for. It’s a staple of my brewing supplies now.
• Favorite Book(s)
• I didn’t have any new acquisitions that blew me away this year. The Dark Lagers book I received for Christmas 2021 has continued to be enjoyable, and The Fermentation Kitchen is excellent for brewing-adjacent projects. I did get the new Book of Hops — it’s very pretty and full of interesting tidbits, but is probably better suited for those earlier in their brewing journey, or general beer enthusiasts versus more advanced homebrewers.
• Other Milestones
  • I made beer vinegar for the first time this year, and it was a fun (and tasty) effort. There will be more of this (and other fermentables) in 2023!
• Overall Stats
  • I brewed 22 batches of beer in 2022, around 120 gallons.
  • IPAs were the major beer of 2022, with 5 batches out of 22. As a category, lagers were 6 out of the 22 batches. This isn’t too different from 2021.

This was a big year for my brewing, even if I had busy stretches with minimal time. As I enter the last few minutes of 2021, here are my thoughts looking back…

• Favorite Batch
  • This was a tough one to pick! I had a decent number of beers I really liked, and so I chose the following two as my favorite batches:
    • Ill-Tempered Gnome. I don’t make American brown ales very often, but this one was just awesome. The hop character is particularly memorable, and I definitely want to make it again sometime.
    • Alstadt Altbier. I feel like I perfected my altbier game on this latest version of the recipe. Again, a very memorable beer!
• Least Favorite Batch
  • Mow the Damn Lawn, Farke. I have done this one before and really enjoyed it, but the batch this year had some issues–specifically, a serious acetaldehyde problem. It cleared over time, but the batch never advanced much beyond “drinkable.”
• Experimental Recipe with Most Potential
  • Winter Dream Ale. High-alcohol beers are not the sort of thing I do all the time, but this particular recipe was really enjoyable in the Christmas to New Year’s stretch. It had a nice mix of flavor and body, making an interesting beer without addition of spices or strange adjuncts.
• Most Fun New Style/Recipe to Try
  • I had fun putting together an amber kellerbier, in Dimorphos Kellerbier. I really freestyled it in the recipe, and achieved a tasty result.
• Upcoming Beer With Most Potential
  • I have another Pliny the Elder clone fermenting right now, and I’m crossing my fingers that it turns out well!
• Best Technique Added to Repertoire
  • I’ve been using a Hochkurz mash semi-regularly, and like the results in terms of extract yield as well as fermentability and flavor.
• Best Ingredient Added to Repertoire
  • The HOPBOX was a lot of fun to play with, and gave me a nice IPA as a result. I’ll be enjoying the next iterations as they arrive this year.
• Favorite Book(s)
  • For Christmas, I received a copy of Dark Lagers: History, Mystery, Brewing Techniques, Recipes (by Thomas Kraus-Weyermann and Horst Dornbusch)…it has been a fun one to browse! The historical information is interesting, the recipes seem solid, and the food recipes are also something I’ll look forward to trying.
• Other Milestones
  • I had some fun with other fermentables this year, including creation of miso paste as well as injera bread. I’ve continued with sauerkraut and homemade mustard, all of which are fantastic accompaniments for beer and sausage.
• Overall Stats
  • I brewed 31 batches of beer this past year, totalling around 150 gallons of beer produced.
  • No particular beer style dominated 2021, although I had three batches of German pils and two batches of American IPA as the most frequently brewed styles. Expanding into IPAs as a general category, I brewed seven recipes in the IPA world (including American, English, white, and double IPAs).

2020 was…2020. With everything that happened, from the pandemic to presidential shenanigans, this was one of the odder brewing stretches I’ve had. My homebrewing hobby was a bit of a respite from 2020, giving me a chance to disconnect and relax. Almost as importantly, homebrewing meant I had a steady supply of fresh beer even when the store shelves were bare, or when I really didn’t want to run more errands than necessary!

Here are some of this year’s highlights:

• Favorite Batch
  • It was hard to pick just one favorite, but Tremonia Lager stands out. The perfect level of maltiness in my version made it incredibly enjoyable, and it was ridiculously drinkable at just shy of 5% abv. More, please! In fact, I have another batch lagering right now.
• Least Favorite Batch
  • Nothing was a complete dumper (in sharp contrast with the dumper year of 2020), although I found that the Kveik Pale Ale was the most disappointing batch. I blame my hopping strategy, not the yeast.
• Experimental Recipe with Most Potential
  • Kveik the Keg Brown Ale was lots of fun, and turned out surprisingly well. If I have Hornindal Kveik on hand in the future, I’ll likely do more in this flavor space.
• Most Fun New Style/Recipe to Try
  • “Favorite Batch” Tremonia Lager also wins this category! It was a new-to-me style (Dortmunder Export, a.k.a., German Helles Exportbier), and I had a lot of fun figuring out the recipe.
• Upcoming Beer With Most Potential
  • I’ve got a few beers in the fermenter or keg that are still waiting to be put on tap, including a German pils, that rebrew of Tremonia Lager, a Scottish-esque ale, and a double IPA (clone of Avery Brewing’s Maharaja IPA). They’re all full of promise, but the one I’m most excited for is “Off the Rails Belgian IPA”. It’s currently in its second week of fermentation, as an attempt at a clone of Houblon Chouffe. It’s a pretty high octane beer, well on target to hit around 10% abv. The batch is going to condition for awhile before being ready to serve, probably a month or two at least. I imagine that this is going to be a beer that I’ll finish fairly slowly, and may not even put it on tap at the main keezer, but will just pull off a glass now and then using a picnic tap.
• Best Technique Added to Repertoire
  • A few months ago, I transitioned to electric brewing, which has enabled mash recirculation as well as easier step mashing. I’m still on the learning curve, but the curve is starting to flatten out a bit. The brew day rhythm is locking into place, and I’ve steadily gotten more efficient with each batch.
• Best Ingredient Added to Repertoire
  • As mentioned above, kveik was a fun yeast space to play around in. I made three batches with it–a pale ale, a brown ale, and my holiday ale. It really does live up to the hype of fermenting cleanly and quickly.
• Favorite Book(s)
  • I really enjoyed the Vienna Lager book by Andreas Krennmair, with its historical details and simple recipes. The book (and one of its recipes that I brewed) are briefly reviewed in a previous post.
• Other Milestones
  • I’ switched entirely to stainless steel fermenters, after years of glass carboy use. Safety was a big concern, as well as ease of cleaning.
  • I had a lot of fun in the fermented foods realm, playing with some sauerkraut and other lacto-based items.
  • On the commercial beverage side, I’ve been sampling a variety of non-alcoholic options. They’re not a complete substitute for alcoholic beverages, but are a bit more interesting flavor-wise.
• Overall Stats
  • I brewed 34 batches of beer this year, with around 160 gallons into kegs.
  • German Pils was my most frequently brewed style, with four batches. American pale ale followed, with three batches. American IPA, Dortmunder Export, Irish stout, and kölsch-style beers had two batches each. Lagers as a group comprised slightly more than a third of my overall brewing this year.
  • Overall beer strength was pretty middle-of-the-road, with a target starting gravity averaging 1.053 (median=1.048). My highest starting gravity was 1.105, for my homebrew club’s imperial stout barrel project. The lowest starting gravity was 1.031, for the Berliner Weisse.