2012 year in review

As I sit here, nearly a year from writing my 2012 goals, I’m struck how I can’t help but be disappointed by my year in brewing. I have accomplished a few of my goals, and a few projects, and made some investments, but I have not made enough progress improving brewing, process, or beers. I feel like I’m a closing in on a process, but have some coming process changes that will make it different once again.

I haven’t had a chance to think about my 2013 goals so that will have to be in another post. I’ll leave this post as a 2012 wrap up. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to eek one more beer, maybe a cider into 2012, but otherwise its over, and I haven’t brewed nearly as much or as well as I wanted.
What I set out to do in 2012:
House / Flagship beer? I’ve made some progress on recipe design, and things to not do (add 1lb of hops in the last 15 minutes). I’m only slightly closer to having the bootle farm house beer.
Enter my beer into competition.
This was a success. I managed to enter 3 beers into competition. Now if you were asking was I happy with the beer I submitted, I’d say yes to two of the entries, and one I knew was a total bust, but had paid the fee, so off it went.
If I plan to do this in the future, I’ll need to invest in a real bottling solution, since bottling from tap is just a bad idea.
This was a great way to get unbiased feedback, insight into the flaws in my beers. I’m happy with the feedback I have received, and look forward to sending more in the future. I’m not happy with the scores, but flawed beers get flawed scores.
Partial Mash. I did it, I didn’t like it. It seems like all the trouble of all grain, w/out all the control. I decided to get a whole grain setup, which I have yet to use.
Brew at a professional brewery.
Complete miss, I wanted to spend a day working / helping out at professional brewery. I really didn’t pursue this, had I pushed the few connections I now have from the home brew club, I’m sure I could have shoveled grain some where, but that’ll have to wait for another year.

What else is interesting, is that I’m about to celebrate one year of this blog. While I haven’t gotten the volume to the level I’d like to brewing, or posting, this has become what I envisioned it. Inspired by a post over on MeekBrewing I thought I’d provide some site stats for the year. Over 40k hits. Averaging 30 visits a day. The most popular post by far is the keggerator update. The coolest thing that has happened to this place, by far, was being profiled on Norm Millers website. So, the year in home brewing blogging hasn’t been too bad. I hope to continue to brew and post in 2013.

So despite what I said when I started this post I’ll include some things I’d like to do in 2013.
I’d really like to post about 3-4x a month.
I’d like to brew every other month at least.
I’d like to brew a berliner weiss
I’d like to finish up some of my pending brewing projects. (keggerator, stir plate, storage)
I’d like to brew with my buddy Michael.
I’d Iike to brew a beer I can’t wait to brew again.

Thanks for the year, hears to 2013.