As the year draws to a close, it's time for another round of
reflection and setting goals for the following year. As I look back on the
year, I'm generally happy with what I accomplished but I was unable to make
progress on many goals. Out of the year I had about 4 months of so where I
could reasonably brew, and this was quite limiting.
Without getting too personal and off the topic of beer, 2016 led
me to a lot of instability which was
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| Carboys and bottles aging at a friend's house |
On the whole the past year has made me feel at times like a
"theoretical brewer" rather than a brewer. I took about 1 year off of
brewing and spent much of this time looking through historic recipes. By the
end of this I noticed that I was having a harder time contextualizing what
specifics meant. This is coming back quickly, so it was illustrative of how
easy it is to pick back up when you think about beer way too much. But it also
illustrated to me how quickly I lost parts of practical brewing intuition that
I had worked hard to earn. I’m happy to be getting these back and am looking
forward to continued brewing within a select range of styles and process, while
being mindful to not let beer take over too much as it has before. So with that
preface to 2016, I’m going to look back on the year in beer for me.
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| Brasserie Au Baron in northern France. |
2016 in review
Europe travels:
Being based in Germany for work opened the door to many great travel
opportunities (beer, wine, food, etc.). Most of these were focused on Belgium
and Northern France and the continued ability to make repeat visits helped to
continue building relationships with European brewers and beer enthusiasts, and
some of the Americans that share a similar passion and travel frequently. This
has by far been the highlight of the last few years of beer to me – the
connections I’ve made and what I’ve learned from others about Belgian beer and
Belgian culture due to making those connections.
Historic Research: 2016 was a great year for the historic Belgian & French beer
research I’ve been doing. Being based in Europe helped a lot for having
discussions with people who really know this stuff and for tracking down
resource material. Thanks to the many people who have helped with this research
(especially Thierry, Niels, and Yvan). The research has led to some interviews
and presentations, and it looks like there may be more on that in the coming
year.
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| Lambic fermenting at Oud Beersel |
Lambic.info: There is more on this below in the 2017 goals, but
one of the highlights of the year in beer for me was being invited to join
lambic.info toward the end of the year. This site is a great resource and a massive
amount of time and work went into building the site into what it is today. I’ve
so far under-performed in my contributions (based on the same schedule-related constraints
that limited brewing in the few months that I was able to). But I’ve got some
plans to make up for that in 2017.
2016 goals: Looking back at the goals I made for 2016, I generally didn’t make a lot of progress. As outlined above, I’m
neither surprised nor disappointed by this. There were only about 5 months out
of the year that I could brew, based on travel for work, so not making much
brewing progress was to be expected and perhaps my goals were a bit ambitious. But
anyway, I should address whether these are still goals to me know and if I
should prioritize them for 2017
House Mixed Culture: I've made essentially no progress here. I’ve been brewing
basically two types of beers (low-OG saison & saison-like beers and
lambic-inspired mixed-fermentation beers) and I am keeping the microbes for
those two categories mutually exclusive for now. But I’ve been happy with my
results on either end, and I could start working toward a mixed culture that
I’ll use for saison-oriented beers. For now I think I’ve found the base yeast
for building that culture. If I continue to work on the culture, it will have
to be something I could package fairly young and be happy with to allow for the
quicker turnaround beers I’ve been brewing without overcarbing too much in the
bottle, which may be a concern with the work I’ve been doing (in mashing and
yeast strain) to raise my FGs. So we’ll see how this goes.
Spontaneous beer: Progress has been minimal here, and this is something I’d like
to try to prioritize going forward. I did include a spontaneous component in
some --recent blending--, but so far no fully spontaneous blends and it is
unlikely that there will be any soon. So I guess I need to get some more base
beers in and keep practicing my blending in general. This is definitely not the
sort of thing that I will make regular steady progress at and it is more likely
going to come in major steps when I have beers that work out well and are aged
enough to use in blends.
Hops: The
past year has brought me even further from new and non-European hops. At this
point I am firmly rooted in landrace hops form continental Europe and the UK.
Every so often I'll venture out of this for newer European hops of more
noble-oriented US hops (something like Sterling, Willamette, etc.). But my
taste preferences have been further solidified by my extended time in Europe.
This is unlikely to change and I’m happy to focus on noble-type hops. But I
would like to find hops that are grown closer to me that I like as much as the
classic European varieties, especially given my focus on using local malt.
2017 Goals
Hoppy Belgian-inspired beers: My trend toward hoppier Belgian-inspired beers has
continued through 2016. I've had multiple friends comment on this when I give
them my homebrews, and I think my use of European hops is improving. I’d like
to continue brewing in this direction with inspiration from breweries like
Thiriez, De La Senne, De Ranke and Seizoensbrouwerij Vandewalle.
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| Volume of Le Petit Journal du Brasseur |
Historic research: I plan to prioritize the historic beer research again this year.
Hopefully I’ll be able to make progress organizing thoughts for other beers
like lambic, bière de garde and saison. I’m planning to return to Europe in the
coming year, at least for leisure and possibly for another temporary move, so I
plan to take advantage of that opportunity to work on more sources. There are
some talks already scheduled for the coming year and hopefully I can work in
some more as well.
Lambic.info: In the latter half of 2016 I was invited to join lambic.info. This is an
amazing resource and I’m really excited to be involved. But unfortunately
between finishing my thesis and multiple trans-ocean work trips, I haven’t been
able to contribute much yet. I hope to change this in first few months of next
year.
Blending and spontaneous beers: I’ve got a lot of aging beer sitting around that I need
to be putting to use. Just before heading off for a research cruise in December
and January I made about 80 liters of blends of mixed-culture beer that was
between 47 and 15 months old (see this post and this post from the facebook
page), but there are a lot of aging carboys left to use. So hopefully in the
coming year I can continue learning about blending and tasting my blends to see
what worked better or worse as they age. The first big blending I did in spring
2015 has already helped me out there, but of course there is more to be done. Part
of this will include continuing to brew spontaneous beers to hopefully create a
fully spontaneous product in the next year or two. We’ll see about that.
Hopefully you all have some good goals for the New Year as well!
