2012 Brewing Goals

I have a bit more lofty brewing goals for 2012 than I did for 2011.
2011 was simple, just brew. No excuses, stop worrying about doing it perfectly, stop fretting about having the right setup. Just get a few batches under my belt, cut my teeth, and make a bad first draft. After spending the year researching and trying to hone my technique I plan on finding my home brewing sweet spot. A style to perfect, and make my own. Something I’m going to want to have in quantity, and something to call the house style or flagship of the bottle Farm. To meet the criteria, it’s gotta be sessionable, flexible, good all year round. The two styles that come to mind are saison or pale ale. So goal 1, is to pick a style and try to brew it right.
The next goal dove tails with this, it’s to enter my beer into a home brew competition. After I’ve honed the beer a bit, perhaps worked out the kinks, I’d like to have something worth entering to a competition. This will be a great way to get unbiased feedback, insight into the flaws in my beer and hopefully some suggestions on improvements.
The third goal is to step up to partial mash brewing. I started with a simple extract recipe, followed it up with extract and steeping speciality grains. The next logical step is to partial mash. I don’t have the gear or the time to go all grain. Despite what Gordon Strong thinks, you can brew some pretty good extract beer, if you put your mind to it. There are so many more variables I’ve yet to control, that worrying about adding complicated mashing / sparging processes to my brew day at this point will only cause more problems than allow me to make better beer.
My last goal is a serious stretch. I’d like to spend a day helping a brewer at a professional brewery. To see their process, and see how things work on a bigger scale. I don’t have connections to any brewers yet, so I’m hoping to leverage social media to make some friends and see what can happen. I’ve been told most small craft brewers can always use some extra help (manual labor), so maybe someone will take me up on the offer.