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<\/p>\nFor 2013 I set achievable goals, and I believe I met all but one. Not too bad, but I played it fairly safe with the goals. 2014 will be more of the same, attainable goals, focused on quality and consistency. Boring, but hopefully rewarding.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019d really like to post about 3-4x a month.<\/strong> –\u00a0<\/span>I managed to do this 10 of 12 months. I don\u2019t feel as though I really generated more quality content, some of it was rushed, and not as valuable as I\u2019d like it to be. I\u2019m sure you all care about my brewing logs, swings and misses, but it\u2019s hard pace for me to maintain while continuing to have a balanced life.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to brew every other month at least.<\/strong> – Looking back I aimed low on this one, I\u2019m not sure what I was thinking, I like to Brew about once a month, 12 batches a year seems about right. I\u2019ve moved onto smaller batches with the goal of quicker beer turn over, and simplifying some of my process. I nailed this goal with 12 sessions, and 13 batches (11 Beers, 1 perry, and 1 cyser).<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to brew a berliner weiss<\/strong> – I did brew one, I didn\u2019t brew a good one, so this will have to go back on the list for 2014, with an added adjective \u2018good’.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to finish up some of my pending brewing projects.<\/strong> (keggerator, stir plate, storage). I finished the stir plate, and it\u2019s been really useful for starters. I did a few other smaller projects like building another mash tun, kettle, a keggerator line cleaner, and made plans for a powered mill table. I didn\u2019t really tackle finishing up the keggerator, it could use some finishing touches, but it works as is, and is not stopping me\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to brew with my buddy Michael. <\/strong>– I brewed twice with Mike, it was a lot of fun both times, but both times were non standard brew days for each of us. The first was a brew party, the second was brewing a huge parti-gyle imperial stout \/ oatmeal stout combo. I\u2019m not sure either of us really were able to relax and enjoy the brew day, or iron out our processes together. I think it\u2019ll be fun this year to have a few more relaxed \u2018normal\u2019 brew day and see how things go. I\u2019m not sure if we\u2019ll settle into split batches, or just play the role of help, either way, I\u2019ll do more of this in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d Iike to brew a beer I can\u2019t wait to brew again. \u00a0<\/strong>– This is the one goal I don\u2019t think I completed. I made a few beers I want to make again to tweak, but none I can\u2019t live without. The closest I came this year \u00a0I\u2019m really happy with the mild I brewed, and eager to make another attempt at the hoppy wheat, but in general I\u2019m still falling far from the mark on the beers I\u2019m brewing and I need to improve xbefore I\u2019m satisfied with where I am, and what I\u2019m brewing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 2014 Goals: Time to tweak and tune my tools, my process and recipes. I have new tools for measuring and calibrating my brewing gear, now is the time to be as repeatable as possible, measure as much as possible. \u00a0I plan on focus on smaller batches, with quality, over variety, or quantity. If that means brewing the same recipe 12 times to get it right, so be it.<\/span><\/p>\n Calibrate everything.<\/strong> For calibration, I\u2019ve picked up some new\u00a0equipment, it\u2019s\u00a0important to \u00a0measure your results, but it\u2019s\u00a0just as\u00a0import ants to ensure your measurements are accurate. On the list of things I\u2019m going to calibrate; my hop scale, and regular scale, my thermometers, my volumes in my fermenters, my boil kettle, and the smaller mash tun. I also plan on calibrating my timings and things like boil off, vorlauf, and sparge time. The more I can quantify, the more consistent I can be.\u00a0<\/span>The number of batches should be reasonable to obtain, assuming I continue to have one night a month I can dedicate to brewing. Posting I plan on scaling back from 2013, I tackled some blogging projects I enjoyed in 2013, but at this point the rewards just aren\u2019t worth the level of effort required to blog more frequently. Hopefully with the decrease in quantity will come an increase in quality. I have a few ideas about how I can address my goal of honing the amarillo wheat recipe. I\u2019ve spoken\u00a0with a few folks about the next steps. I plan to adjust my water additions, tweak the hop ratio more\u00a0toward amarillo, as well as add some additional crystal. Hopefully this will be I\u2019ll get closer. For reading and reviewing books, this is simple. I will not buy any more until I have read what I own. I have a staggering amount of reading to do. This is an aggressive goal for me, as I\u2019m not much of a book reader, I plow through blogs and forums like it\u2019s nobodies business, but books take a different level of focus. On the to finish reading list:<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>For the love of hops<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Secrets from the Master Brewers<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>The Audacity of Hops<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer<\/a>,\u00a0Tasting Beer<\/a>, Water<\/a>, Yeast<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Brewmaster’s Table<\/a>,\u00a0Wild Brews<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Brewing Better Beer<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Principals of brewing science<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In general I plan on buckling down, and try to nail a few simple recipes. Nothing too fancy, just get it right. Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For 2013 I set achievable goals, and I believe I met all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[133,23,15],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects-and-thoughts","tag-133","tag-project-update","tag-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"IMG](\"http:\/\/thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/IMG_2913.jpg\" "\\"IMG_2913.JPG\\"")
<\/p>\n
\n12 Batches.
\n<\/strong>12-24 posts.
\n<\/strong>Hone my hoppy Amarillo Wheat Recipe.
\n<\/strong>Read and review 12 books.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n