End of the Year Review

It's almost the end of 2014.  This marks my 4th year of homebrewing.  It has been a crazy ride up to this point.  The hombrewing I do determines the beers I try at bars and vice versa.  I have seen my tastes evolve and mature with each batch of homebrewed beer.  I no longer fear drinking an infected batch of beer - it might just be on its way to a perfect sour with the addition of a few more bugs.  How about a beer in the bottle just tastes to much like one flavor.  Degas the beer in the bottles and mix with another batch of beer and hope that you can balance it back out. 

Anyways – I want to put all of plans for 2015 on a piece of paper.  I somewhat did this last year with this post: http://vorpbrew.blogspot.com/2014/01/new-year-new-brews.html.

I hit most of the goals along with many more.  Here is 2014 in review:

1.  I learned the value of research.  Newly created beers all have their roots from something.  A little research on a style or an idea of a style created two memorable brews.  One was my wit.  I decided not to use any of the newer ideas of recipes and just stick to what was present back in the day.  I used the 50-50 split between malt and wheat.  Used a simple Belgian yeast and added some lacto that was most definitley present during the height of these beers.  It was not sweet.  It was light, bubbly and delicious.  My favorite beer this year.  Me and my friend also brewed a beer that would of been present in the 1600's - 1700's.  It was an Oat ale brewed with 75% oat, barley, English ale yeast and tansy.  The tansy was bought from a witch doctor online.  So we really felt like we went back in time. This beer sadly was infected to the point that it tasted like bandaids.  I'm sure the fact that the sterilizing benefits of hops were missing.
2. The Cab Sauv barrel is finally producing amazing beer.  The latest sour tasting I took from the barrel was amazing.  Complex, earthy, sour, tart, bready and even chocolate and vanilla notes are coming out of the Flanders inspired beers.  Now I just need to figure out how to carbonate them.  I have been failing miserably at this task.
3. The sour stout brewed in March of 2013 is also an amazing beer.  Again, I need to work on carbonation issues with this one.  I will also be starting to sour this in a barrel this year.  Most likely around March again.  A batch is being brewed on Friday of this week that will eventually be the first sour in the barrel.  Oh yeah, the barrel is a blackberry Pinot Noir.
4. My lambic style beer smells awesome.  But it seems during my first bottle test that I have the dreaded strain of bacteria that causes the beer to be sick.  We will see how that works since this beer is now aging in the Riesling barrel.
5. The more I brew with it the more I like Brett.  My favorite IPA I have made to date is the 100% Brett Trois IPA I brewed this year.  It was great.  I have plans for a rebrew this year.  More on that in the next section.
6. Finally - I brewed a pumpkin beer that made it out of the bottle.  This was a four year process.  I failed miserably each time prior.  This time. Success.  I probably wont brew it again and I have an update on what became of the Chocolate Pumpkin Stout.

Overall a great year.  Plenty of failures but plenty of success.  I learn so much more in those failures that I guess they really aren't failures. Hey, I know what not to do during the next batch.

So here are the plans for 2015:

1. Complete my barrel aging set up.  I have a Cab Sauv barrel for Red Sours, a Riesling barrel for my Lambic and soon will have my Blackberry Pinot Noir for my sour stouts.  This time next year I will hopefully be tasting beers from all three
2. Start my Gueze project.  One gallon from the Lambic barrel will be stored into a glass jar.  That one gallon will mix with this years version and I will go until I collect 3 gallons of lambic beer to make a traditional Gueze.  Look for the tasting notes in 2018 I guess!
3. Explore more wine and beer combos.  Yeah most of my wine beer combos are only with the use of the barrel but I intend to explore that some more.  I dont have room for more barrels so I will be stuck with oak chips.  Lame.  Here are those projects I have lined up.
4. A white wine/saison mixing.  This is not something new.  It's being done and it just sounds delicious and seems to be inline with my style.  So I am going to do it.
5. A wine/IPA combo.  I had 61 minute from Dogfish Head and was blown away by the combo.  Bitter wine notes don't seem to go together but when you can complement the flavor from each I imagine a great beer.  My initial thought is a Mango Australian Chardonnay with the 100% Brett IPA.  The mango juice flavor I got from the hops and the Brett should hopefully be amplified with this wine. 
6. Tripel.  Simple one here.  I just want to make a Tripel that is inspired by La Fin du Monde.
7. Bring back some dead beer styles:
1. Lichtenhainer - Think of a Berliner Weisse with smoked malt
2. Gose - This beer is already making a comeback.  The chapter in "Brewing with Wheat" that talks about Gose mentions that most commercial versions are not salty enough.  They provide a recipe and I plan to brew it like that.
3. Gratzer - A 100% smoked-wheat-hop-bomb of a beer.  A small beer at 1.028 OG that is made using 100% Smoked wheat for the grain bill.  It is then hopped up to 32 IBU's.  The quote from the "Brewing with Wheat" book states "The first time i opened one of these for some friends, the guys across the room smelled the smoke reek instantly."  I have to try it.
8. Figure out how to best bottle and carbonate my sours.  Once I figure this out I will be blending and mixing with fruits or bottling straight.  The fun then begins.

Well that's it.  A much more detailed list of what I did this year and what I plan to do next year.  Let's hope I can hit all of these goals.

Prost!