New Year Resolutions!

Everybody makes them. Very few keep them throughout the entire year. For 2019 I decided to put aside a single resolution and instead, decide on a few home brewing goals that I would like to achieve.

Homebrewers are like Magpies - always flitting to the next shiny thing. We jump from recipe to recipe and style to style. Because we can and it's fun. But there is something to be said about being able to make that Hefeweizen our friends raved about last summer and have it meet their expectations when they try the next batch.
Not many of us place any import on consistency and repeatability.

So my homebrewing goals for 2019 are...




Recreate one of my favorite Porters from Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, Mi.

Continue tweaking last summer's Cream Ale recipe.

Develop a Scottish Ale in the style of Dirty Bastard, again from Founders Brewing.

And for the clone beers the goal is more than creating an accurate version of the original. It is to be able to repeat those results time and time again.

Of course plans are made to be broken... or at least changed. Just two days into the new year and the Magpie in me has already been distracted by a new "shiny". I stopped in to a beer and wine store that I don't visit much because it is on the far side of town . Over the weekend I was in that neighborhood so I dropped into Opperman's Cork and Ale where I was pleasantly surprised to find Fullers London Pride and Fullers ESB. Two English beer's I have read so much about but have never, ever found in-or-around Saginaw, Michigan!


I came home with a four-pack of London Pride and another of ESB and fell in love with both. It didn't take long to find an accurate recipe so these two amazing beers must be added to my goal list.

The only question now is do I have time to brew each of these as many times as it takes to develop both accuracy and repeatability within the span of a single year?


That will be part of the experiment. I will not rush any of them just to get to the next. If I don't get to them all there is always next year. So much beer to make. So little time!