Well it's a new year for me and for my blog. It's been a fun six month. I've posted a few recipes, some reviews, and other things. My kegerator will be done soon. My souring project is on it's way.
2012 New Years Resolutions:
Brew a beer with lager yeast;
Blend a sour ale from my stock of sour ales, attempt blending;
Manufacture Tap Handles doe Atlas Ale, Howard Roark Red, and Golden One Pale Ale.
Work out a recipe for my house pale ale based on feedback from Kyle, Derek & others;
Work out a recipe for the house red ale based on my two past failures;
Attempt to make a few more small sours & quick sours (post incoming);
Brew and Keg at least 2 more beers;
Finish out my small brewery with a malt mill;
and, Keep detailed notes and measurements about my brewing.
(read more after the break.)
Expanding Those Ideas:
Brew a beer with lager yeast: this could be a baltic porter, a schwarzbier, a doppelbock, or an American light adjunct lager. Mostly I just want to try to brew something while controlling the temperature and figuring that out. Look for this in may before my apartment gets super hot.
Blending a sour ale from my stock of sour ales: I have 15 gallons of lambic, 5 of Flanders red, and 2 gallons of sours in my apartment. I'll be brewing more sours here soon as I look to make quick sours. It's my goal to blend my lambics into a gueze once they're all a little more than a year old. I smelled the roselaire lambic this past weekend and it smelled pungent like rodenbach grand cru. If the gueze needs something be it some of the Flanders red, or some of another sour I'll blend that in and keep notes.
Work out a recipe for my house pale ale: 'Atlas Ale' is the title brew of my Ayn Rand themed dream brew-house. I want to get a recipe set this year based on what I've done and what I've liked. With detailed notes from Kyle and Derek it'll be a good try next time. If I can brew it twice this year I think I'll be closing in on the hop profile I want.
Work out a recipe for the house red ale: this is my recipe based on Jamil's Evil Twin interpretation of Alesmith's Evil Dead Red. Both 'failures' turned out rather tasty. I liked my bottle of imperial hoppy red ale. I want to dial in this recipe and have it as a readily available recipe in my stable. This is a bit harder because I don't have anything set here. I have the malt bill for my APA set, this is more fluid.
Attempt to make a few more small sours & quick sours: I want to brew 1 or 2 more small sours in my apartment. The 2-12 month time-frame on these makes them rather hard to do in my small apartment where I'll quickly run out of room. The quick sour idea from the March/April zymurgy of last year (post upcoming in February) is appealing because it'll be a lot less time invested to turn out something that is potentially good, we'll see.
Brew and Keg at least 2 more beers: I'd like to finish off both of my kegs with friends at some point, then refill them, it'll keep the beer fresh and me having fun. Who knew drinking would be the hardest part of home-brewing.
Finish out my small brewery with a malt mill: I have a malt mill in mind, after I take a vacation to pliny day 2012 I'll be saving for a vacation with Sarah, but I hope to squeeze a malt mill in there somewhere.
Keeping better notes will be important as will taking measurements, currently my gravities are a guesstimate, my fermentation temperature varies. I need to tweak beer smith so I end up with a bit more wort to take a post boil reading of OG and commit to taking a reading of my beer before I bottle it for FG. I will look into getting a thermowell to monitor fermentation temps as well as attempting to monitor methods for making my process repeatable. I want 2012 to be about getting better, not just making more beer.
My Personal Best Of 2011s:
Best Beer I Brewed: Wet Hop DIPA
Best Commercial Beer: Oude Tart
Best Brewery Visited: Cigar City
Best Bar Visited: The Surly Goat
My Favorite Pictures From 2011:
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