2016 - Brewing Schedule

At the beginning of each year I like to plan out what I want to accomplish each year.  I can only fit in so many brew days and there are just too many great ideas for beer.  So putting it here on this blog helps me look back and see how I have done.  I already have a great lineup of beers to brew this year.  Some are tweaks.  Some are new based on great commercial examples and, well, some are just continuing my sour program.

First up are the beers for my wedding.  We have a venue that allows me to bring in my homebrew.  Great news for me.  I get to say I'm working on the wedding while I am brewing test batches or the full batches that I will get to brew in April.

For the wedding here is what I am planning on:

10 Gallons of my Brett IPA.  I plan to take down the ABV just a tad so it's a bit more sessionable.  I may or may not add the mango juice.  Depends on costs of everything else.

10 Gallons of a witbier.  I just brewed up a new recipe that I will post about shortly.  This is my basic witbier recipe but I added 5% acid malt.  I want to push the beer to have more tang like my first witbier that was dosed with some Jolly Pumpkin dregs.  I dont want to go that sour since this will be for mass consumption, but I do want to have a refreshing tart bite.  Hopefully the lactic acid malt and the WLP 400 yeast can do the job.  This test batch should be ready for me to taste very shortly.  I also want to brew this one quick and serve it super fresh like it would of back in the day.

I may even test the waters on a Lite American Ale.  Part of me wants to do it just because while the other part says not to waste the effort.  We will see if I have time for a test batch.

Next up is my sour program.  Here is what I plan to do this year.
I will get a barrel of each beer.  I will take the beer from those barrels and break them out pretty close to the same way as I did this year.

Red Barrel - My sour red will be broken down into the following batches:

1. Straight sour red
2. Sour red with sour cherries (this batch from 2015 was probably the best of the crop)
3. Another attempt at my Currant and Raisin blend.  I added way too much currant this year.  It pushed the acidity into an almost un drinkable stage. I may even brew a clean red this year to mix on tap with this batch.

Black Barrel  - The sour stout will most likely stay the same.  I do have a few ideas for some smaller break downs.

1. Straight - Most will be straight.
2. Plum - I want to put some on some Vinter Harvest Plum fruit.
3. Figs - Once Trader Joes has these back in stock I want to do a Fig and Honey or Fig and Oatmeal combo.

Golden Barrel - Since I break my golden down for making Gueze I dont have as much to play with.  Here are the plans for that:

1. 2 gallons for Gueze.  First batch will be in 2017.
2. 1 gallon straight
3. 1 gallon on raspberries that my friend picks from his backyard (this batch looks amazing. the batch from 2015 should be ready to drink in March or June of this year. 
4. 1 gallon on Peach.  I really wanted to do a peach this year but didn't get enough sour beer after the mix.  Heres hoping I do this year.

Finally I want to brew a few other beers so far in the works are the following:

1. Oak aged Brown Brett Porter (already brewed this one.  Need to do a recap)
2. Belgian Speicialty Ale (Duvel like beer - already brewed this one too. Need to do a recap)
3. Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout (brewing this weekend.  A beer based on Xoxoveca by Stone.  A simply amazing beer)
4. Barley Wine - Slowly getting into these.  A small 2 gallon batch will be brewed in Spring so we can enjoy it next fall and winter.

I know that these 10 or so beers I have listed will most likely cover the majority of my year.  To close here are some numbers on my sour beer program.

Around town, it costs roughly 20-30 dollars to get a quality sour beer in a 750mL bottle.  Pretty expensive.  I've paid that much for a few 12oz beers here as well.  It's an expensive beer to be a fan of.  Part of the reason I started brewing sours was my goal to make a beer good enough to stand up with some of those commercials.  Four years later I think I finally did that.  My sours are pretty damn good.  I still buy those 30 dollar bottles, but not nearly as much.  I pulled 72 bottles out of my barrels this year (750mL)  This would of costs me over $2,000 to buy this amount of sour beers.  The costs of the barrles, wine kits that I brewed to add to the barrel for flavoring before the beer went in, ingredients for the beer, bottles etc was probably just north of 1,000 dollars.  So I save roughly 1,000 dollars.  My costs this year to maintain my sour program is going to be MAYBE 200 dollars. Depending on the fruit combos I do it could be even cheaper.  I just need to brew 3 five-gallon batches.  Cost savings are really going to kick in this year.  

Think about that.  What I would of spent 2,000 dollars on - is going to cost me 200.  Making great beer and saving a ton of money.  Great stuff right there.

Until next time...