Category Archives: miscellaneous

2022’s Brew Year’s Resolutions

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Once again, it’s time to look ahead to the new year of brewing. What would I like to achieve in 2022?

  • Session Beers
    • I’ve always had session-strength beers as a regular part of my brewing rotation, and have had some really great successes. I’ve done well with IPAs and stouts, and would now like to branch out a bit. I recently made a session strength dark mild, which I just put on tap and am really enjoying. A Scottish 70-/Heavy is on the schedule, and I might even aim for a patersbier soon.
  • German Pils
  • Pre-Prohibition Lager
    • I recently had the 1903 Lager from Craftsman Brewing Company (Pasadena), and this beer was amazing as a pre-Prohibition style lager that clocks in at 5.2% abv. The malt character was fantastic, against some really nice hop qualities. It’s hard to find much information on this beer, so I’m going to need to look around a bit in the world of pre-Prohibition lagers to figure out a comparable recipe. In any case, this is a beer style I want to make!
  • IPAs
    • I’ve made some good IPAs, and even some great ones, but I’ve not yet settled on a “house” recipe. I need to change that. I have found that “traditional” West Coast IPAs with a heft measure of Centennial and Cascade are most to my taste, so I want to revisit previous successes and see if I can’t replicate those. I might even return to a session rye IPA, to hit the session beer goal again.

Follow-Up: 2021’s Brew Year’s Resolutions

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I made a few brewing goals for 2021, and with the turning of the calendar page, it’s time to assess the damage (or progress).

  • Kveik.
    • I set a goal to brew more with kveik, and did get two batches in with this family of yeast cultures, both IPAs. They turned out OK, but not great. I’ll probably play around more with kveik in the future, but I feel that the trend has perhaps run its course for my brewing tastes and needs.
    • Final Score: 5/10
  • Pilsner.
    • I set out to perfect a German pils, and came close. I’ve figured out my general grain bill and bitterness regimes, and now it’s just a matter of continued iteration. The Pilsnerpeton batch is perhaps the best from 2020/2021, and Farke’s Best Pils also came out pretty great. I just need a little more practice, and I’ll get there.
    • Final Score: 7/10
  • Big Beers in Small Batches.
    • I’m feeling really great about this one. I ended up with three small-batch beers higher than 7% abv, including the excellent Winter Dream Ale. Although I could have brewed more of these, I am actually pretty satisfied with where I landed on this goal. Each of the beers turned out fairly well, and it was about the perfect quantity for what I had energy to drink (or share).
    • Final Score: 8/10
  • Belgian Beers.
    • I didn’t do great on this one, probably because I got distracted by other brewing projects. Alongside the aforementioned Winter Dream Ale, I fermented three other beers with Belgian yeast. Two of these were old favorites (Raspberry Belgian and Pannotia White IPA), and another was a big quad for a homebrew club barrel project. So…I really have work to do here next year. Maybe a patersbier for Lent?
    • Final Score: 4/10

Overall Assessment of 2021: 6/10 for brewing goals — not great, but not awful. I still had fun, though!

2021’s Homebrew Highlights

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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
  • 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).

What’s Brewing? December 2021 Edition

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As we head into the end of the year, I find that I’m having to pace my brewing a bit. I want to brew more frequently, but either don’t have time or (more pragmatically) have a bunch of beer on-hand already. In any case, I’m planning out the brewing schedule for the next few weeks, and have some fun stuff “on tap.” My current tap selection is pretty darned good, which makes for enjoyable sampling.

Beer Batch Updates

  • Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout is now kegged, and conditioning. I’ve noted that this recipe tends to attenuate fairly poorly (finishing north of 1.020), which is actually a good thing in terms of body and lower alcohol.
  • I kegged the amber kellerbier / zwickel, and it is now carbonating. The plan is to have it on-tap very soon, so that it can be available for pairing with our traditional pretzel night during the holidays.
  • I brewed a dark mild last weekend, and it is now fermenting. In a bit of experimental laziness, I transferred the beer directly onto the yeast cake from the oatmeal stout. In part, I wanted to try this technique. But mostly I just didn’t want to clean the fermenter. As a side effect, I saved a few bucks (unless the beer is bad, in which case I didn’t save anything).
  • My newer German pils is lagering, and I plan to keg it soon.

What’s On Tap?

  • I’m on the home stretch for the kegs of Farke’s Best Pils and Humboldt’s Lesser Hefeweizen. Once those are done, I can rotate in the kellerbier!
  • I just put the American IPA on-tap (made with 2021 hops), and it is drinking beautifully.

What’s Coming Up?

  • I plan to brew a pale ale with a few more of the hops from the HOPBOX, specifically Strata and El Dorado.
  • I’m also going to run a clone recipe of Pliny the Elder again, this time with slight modification. Kits were on sale at MoreBeer, so I picked one up just to give it a try.
  • I am thinking about another pilsner soon, once I evaluate the most recent German pils.
  • A Scottish 70/- heavy is on my list, so I can have another lower alcohol beer on hand.

What’s Brewing? November 2021 Edition

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Brewing continues to be an on-again/off-again festivity, as I work my way through a busy chunk of the year. Thankfully, the weekends are starting to free up a bit, so I’ve started to get ahead of things again.

Beer Batch Updates

  • Since last report, I kegged my Ill Tempered Gnome clone, and it’s now on tap. Although I had planned to bring some to Thanksgiving with friends, plans changed and now I’m “stuck” with the keg all on my own. Looks like a few lucky local friends will get a growler!
  • Winter Dream Ale–a Belgianesque winter warmer–has been kegged, and is now conditioning. The flavors seem pretty nice in preliminary tastings, although it needs a bit more time to drop completely clear. I hope to move it on-tap in time for Christmas.
  • On November 6, I brewed an IPA using hops from a recent HOPBOX, and it is now conditioning in the keg. I expect it will go on-tap fairly soon, because the kegs in the main keezer are getting pretty low.
  • I brewed this year’s iteration of Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout on November 13. It’s finishing up the rest in the primary fermenter, and should be kegged in the next day or two.
  • A new German pils is currently fermenting, after my brew day on November 21. It is going to ferment next to an amber zwickel, which got brewed on November 22. The former beer was made using the Edelweiss hop blend, which is an interesting experiment. The latter beer is a bit of a kitchen sink recipe to use up some odds and ends (especially Munich and Vienna malt). For each, I did a hochhurz mash (45 minutes at 144° and 45 minutes at 160°, before mash-out), and this really seems to boost my mash efficiency! I was at nearly 77% for the zwickel and 74% for the pils, which are each well above my usual 68%. On my previous pils, I just did a 60 minute mash at 149°, which ended with 70% mash efficiency. So, I speculate that a longer mash can be a key to boosting gravity in the Anvil Foundry. I might add this in to my regimen more frequently, once I evaluate the results.

What’s On Tap?

  • Ill-Tempered Gnome is now on tap, and it drinks really well. It’s a perfect winter beer, in that it has lots of flavor but isn’t too heavy or cloying.
  • Farke’s Best Pils is also almost gone, but still tastes quite good.
  • Humboldt’s Lesser Hefeweizen is probably halfway through the keg.

What’s Coming Up?

  • I need to plan my holiday brewing sessions, and am starting to work out the possibilities. A tropical pale ale is in the lineup (using HOPBOX hops), and I’m also thinking an English dark mild for something a bit more sessionable that will use up ingredients.