2023 Update on the 2021 BJCP Goal

If you follow this blog, you know I've renewed my old BJCP Goal.

Through a series of blog posts, I've discovered / acknowledged that I had not brewed whole categories in the 2021 Style Guidelines (see BJCP 2021 Style Guidelines, I lied, and 2021 BCJP Styles to Brew).

At some point, I decided to not only try to get every category covered, but work through all the styles (at least the ones that I'm interested in drinking)

I even came up with a "Roll-a-Style" concept to give me help deciding which style to brew.

After X-Mas Ale 2023 (Batch 347), I've now brewed at least one style in every BJCP Category. And ... I'm not planning on adding any more new styles before the end of the year.

2023 Q3 Brewing Stats

The summer just flew by. We are now into October and therefore it is time to report my Brewing Stats for the 3rd Quarter.

I brewed 6 batches in each of Q1 and Q2. I keep saying that I'll start to slow down ... but again ... I brewed 6 batches in Q3.

For what it is worth, in July I brewed 3 batches. 2 batches in August. I only brewed 1 batch in September. So, I am sort of slowing down I guess.

The recipes I brewed in Q3 were:

• Hail Storm Summer Saison
• Gypsy Magic Bière de Garde
• Helles Won't Kellerbier
• Steamacularly Common
• Buckwheat's Belgium Pale Ale
• Shoddy IPA

Pork Butt and Kumbucha

Summer is almost over!

My youngest son is heading off to college this week. How did this happen so fast?

One of the things he requested before heading off to school was to have pulled pork for dinner some night.

So, this past Sunday I smoked a pork butt.

Generally, I use Kombucha to spray my bbq. My spray bottle was empty, but I've had a batch fermenting for quite awhile.

So, I had to bottle up that batch.

I got started around 6am, applying rub to the butt, getting the kettle ready, and getting the kombucha ready to bottle.

Gypsy Magic, Wings and Corn

So.... I sort of had a weird issue with Gypsy Magic Bière de Garde, but I seem to have gotten past it.

The issue was that the beer was quite cloudy when I kegged it.

I'm really not sure why. It attenuated fully and I thought I had given enough time to clear up.

I thought that once it was chilled it would take a day or two to clear up, but it really stayed cloudy for longer than I expected. Eventually, I added gelatin to help settle out the "crud", and a couple days after, that seems to have done the trick.

But, I probably had almost a whole gallon of beer before it was where I thought it was finally good to drink.

I guess the good news is that the beer is exactly what I think it should be now. 

Smooth and malty with clean yeast character. Fairly strong, but dangerously drinkable. Not much hop character. Nice and dry. Beautiful dark amber / brown.

Gypsy Magic Bière de Garde (Batch 339)

Remember I said I am running low on beer?

Well ... because of that, I decided to brew on the 4th of July this year.

This is already my 14th batch of beer this year, and my 339th batch ever.

If I'm counting correctly, this would be my 218th unique recipe.

You'll remember I had decided to brew a "Bière de Garde" next on Roll-a-Style 13 ... Bière de Garde.

Of course, Bière de Garde isn't a style of beer I see a bunch in breweries or liquor stores, so I probably won't get a chance to compare my batch to a commercial example ... but that's ok ...

Gypsy Magic Bière de Garde

Roll-a-Style 13 ... Bière de Garde

Ok ... after having people visiting and drinking a bunch of my beer, I need to brew to get my inventory back up.

In order to determine what to brew next, I decided to start the SheppyBrew Roll-a-Style.

So ... I used my online 20 sided die and rolled ...

On my list, 13 just happened to correspond with style 24C. Bière de Garde.