1st Blogiversary - State of the Brew

As I mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to give a kind of wrap-up to the first year of this blog.  While there would certainly be value to putting up numbers and figures relating to the traffic on this site, I thought that instead it might be more fun (and more informative for my future brewing) to tally the stats relating to what I've brewed and blogged about this past twelve months.  Hence, here we go...

Total number of posts (including this one): 39
Total number of beers brewed: 24

Colour
58.3% - 14 amber (7 to 17 SRM)
37.5% - 9 dark (18 SRM and above)
4.2% - 1 pale (6 SRM or less)

I'm not surprised that most of my output falls squarely in the middle of the colour spectrum; I don't brew a lot of really light beers, like kolsch or light lager.  I do like to brew darker beers as well, though (and DeAunn especially likes to drink them), so they're pretty well represented too.

Original gravity
33.3% - 8 low gravity (1.040 to 1.055)
29.2% - 7 medium gravity (1.056 to 1.070)
25.0% - 6 high gravity (above 1.070)
12.5% - 3 small beer (below 1.040)

Mad Fermentationist Michael Tonsmiere commented in a post just a couple days ago on the over-the-top arms race of sorts in the craft brewing community, focusing on super high-gravity, barrel-aged juggernauts.  The same seems to hold true in homebrewing circles at times; I know that most of my first recipes came in at 6.5% ABV or above.  Since that initial rush, though, I've really come to appreciate (as have many others before me) the virtues of flavourful, lower-gravity session beers.  That doesn't mean I eschew the bigger beers; looking at my upcoming brew docket, most of what I'm planning for the next few months will be heavyweights.  But I definitely like to keep drinkability in mind when I'm making my schedule; I certainly like having around a few batches of which I can enjoy more than half a bottle in an evening.  I didn't do a lot of really small beer brewing this year, but I do have one snuck in amongst all those big beers to make this spring.  Past that, I'd like to continue to concentrate on those session strength beers that still deliver a lot of flavour.

Yeast/national style

45.8% - 11 British
33.3% - 8 American
12.5% - 3 Belgian
8.2% - 2 German

This was a tough one to categorize sometimes; some beers were hybrids of a multiple styles, like the all-Citra special bitter I made for my friend Ted's wedding.  Even considering the split, I've made a lot of British-style beers in the last year. The American-style beers included pale ales and IPAs as well as most of the sours; the Belgians were all saisons of one sort or another.  The Germans included one that was actually to style (the alt) and one that wasn't (the summer rye).  I expect that this balance will stay mostly in place in the coming year.

Character
45.8% - 11 malty
25.0% - 6 hoppy
16.7% - 4 balanced
12.5% - 3 sour

I do love hoppy beers, and have especially been missing them this winter, which is why my next brew will be an American pale ale.  Beers that are more malt forward, though, seem to fit more situations and tastes, and thus ended up being brewed more.  To be fair, I did use this as a bit of a catch-all category, when I didn't think any of the other descriptors really fit the beer in question (such as with yeast-driven beers like saisons, spiced beers, etc.).  Next year I might make that differentiation; for now, I'll just let it be.  Beers that strike a balance of character don't go unappreciated in this house, though.  As I get a better handle on brewing sours, particularly how to age them in our current cellar-less living arrangement, I expect the number of them on hand to increase.

Brewing method
91.7% - 22 all-grain
8.3% - 2 extract

Yes, I'm an unrepentant all-grain brewer.  One of the extract batches was really a yeast starter; the other was a full batch brewed with my father, who's an extract brewer at this point (though he has big plans for expanding the size and scope of his brewing once my parents eventually move out of their current house).  I've been very pleasantly surprised by the quality of his beers; they're certainly an improvement over those I made early in my brewing life, and I'm continually tempted to try another full extract batch.  The lower cost and higher level of recipe "tweakability" keep me in the grain bins for now, though.  We'll see what I manage to sneak in this year.

Brew support

83.3% - 20 brewed solo
16.7% - 4 brewed with friends

Most brewdays I set up and execute on my own; it's just how the schedule usually works out.  It's always enjoyable to have folks over to help, or just with whom to hang out and enjoy a beer while brewing.  It was great having a few really good friends with whom I'd brew (at my place and theirs) in Chicago; I've introduced a few of our SLC folks to homebrew, and look forward to having more of them over more often to do it as well as drink it.

Success rate
87.5% - 21 good
12.5% - 3 dumped

Sometimes my grandiose pipe dreams just don't end up working; this year, it was my wheatwine, Scotch rye, and chocolate mint oatmeal stout.  The the first two were, in their own ways, too big for their own good; the stout suffered from not understanding my extra ingredients well enough.  The good news, though, is that there were only three this year that didn't turn out this year, which means I had a lot more great beer to drink and share than I did bad beer to dump; that I've learned from all these experiences and can make concrete changes to my process to fix them; and that nothing had to be dumped due to infection.  I have more strange brewing plans for the future, but I'll apply the lessons I've learned from these failed batches to cut out some of the possible issues before they arise.

Non-brewing posts: 17
47.1% - 8 "other"
23.5% - 4 hop growing
17.6% - 3 tastings
11.8% - 2 cooking

There's a little bit of everything in this category.  I'd like to experiment more with cooking with beer and brewing ingredients, so hopefully there'll be an uptick there; if you have a favourite use for beer in a recipe, a novel use for spent grains, etc., please share it with me!  I may also post updates on my hops more often this year; I enjoy checking on their progress climbing the lead lines about as much as I love sniffing airlocks.  (Side note: I have some rehab work to do on one of my plants, as someone ran into the container and broke open the front a little while ago.  I can't even recall which plant it is; hopefully I'll be able to figure it out from my blog pictures!) The biggest increase I plan to make this year is in tasting notes.  I don't feel very confident describing beers, but the only way I can think to improve that is to push myself to do it more often.  Let's see if I stick to it.  A lot of my "other"-type posts will probably shift over to the Nonic Pint blog my Chicago folks and I have established, but much of the rest will still be here.

If you've lasted through all these notes, then bully on ya.  This has helped me understand where I'm coming from this past year, and I look forward to how it will inform me in the coming year.  Feel free to share any other observations you've had or other ways you think the blog could be improved.  I hope you'll enjoy what's coming even more than what you've already read.