Homebrew review of the year 2013

Posted by: pdtnc on: December 31, 2013

In: Brewing
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This years Homebrew review of the year isn’t going to be as lengthy as other years as I’ve simply not brewed as much and didn’t try that hard when it came to the National Homebrew Competition, some serious time was spent building a car-port style affair at the side of the house, so the list bellow is the best of what I had time to brew…

AG #110 – Ring of Fire IPA
This one is also still fermenting, but it smells & tastes so good I thought I’d add it to my end of year round up, it has promise whether I dry hop it or not 😉
AG #109 – Mittlefruh Junga Blonde
This isn’t actually bottled at the time of writing this but tastes from the FV have been displaying some the traits I was wanting so I have high hopes for another easy drinker like AG#108 but with more spicy character.
AG #105 – Summit 73 E366
This is bloody marvelous, I hope they re-release Experimental 366 in future years and let us know what its going to be called.
AG #104 – NZ Sour Wheat
My Sour Mashed wheat beer, this is a style I’d like to pursue further, I dropped lucky and got a really nice balance between the Sour and the balancing sweetness and body.
AG #103 – Farmhouse Rye Noir
My first attempt at a Saison and it turned out damn well too 🙂
AG #102 – Gods of War
Easy drinking mix of under-used hops, worthy of a re-brew but with more cara/crystal/hotter-mash/flaked-barley.
AG #101 – SCAN
Mental but good, in hindsight I’d go a bit easier on things to ensure more of a crowd-pleaser.
AG #100 – Altitudinous Cable
Everything to the MAX, a touch too much Max which has taken time to settle down, VERY hoppy, this is going to age really well over a few years 🙂
AG #99 – BoomStick
Massively easy drinking simple recipe.
AG #98 – Robust Wheat Porter
It seems these user-upper brews always turn out well, this is a mega solid porter with hints of smoke.
AG #96 – Bravo+Apollo=Citra?
An experiment that turned out good.
AG #94 – Hooded Embarrassment
Maybe not my best beer but it ticks enough boxes and made for enjoyable drinking.
AG #93 – Pacific Rim
Nice little hop-combo and worthy of a re-brew.

A nice surprise this year was this book through the post from Andy Hamilton featuring a couple of my homebrew recipes, its full of good stuff and obviously some cracking recipes 😉
Too many hops and so little time!
My Hop-Freezer is bulging, I should make 2014 the year when I don’t buy any hops!
Sad to say the 50L copper I am building and said in last years review I would finish, is still not complete just the hop-filter to sort out and a mate to finish the socket wiring, I obviously need to get my finger out once the wiring is done.
What I want to do in 2014 is get an upt-to-date Liquor test by Murphy & Son and maybe get my digital Thermometer calibrated so when I mash in at 69°c I am really mashing in at 69°c! (for most beers 69°c seems to be the mash temperature that makes us-05 get to the FG that BeerEngine says it will!)