2025 Q2 SheppyBrew Stats

It's July, which means that we've made it through the second quarter of 2025. It is time to "report" on the 2025 Q2 SheppyBrew Stats.

Q1 was pretty busy, and I was on track for 120 gallons of beer in 2025.

Q2, on the other hand wasn't nearly as busy. I only brewed 4 batches of beer totaling 20 gallons, putting my projected 2025 volume right at 100 gallons.

The Q2 batches were:

• Melting Stream Spring Saison
• Halfway to Helles Leichtbier
• Summer Lovin' American Wheat
• Gob Stopper Grape Ale

At the time that I'm typing this, I have Melting Stream, Halfway to Helles, and Summer Lovin' on tap. Gob Stopper is fermenting.

Melting Stream Spring Saison

  

Halfway to Helles vs Astrosuds Lager

So, part of the logic around brewing Halfway to Helles Leichtbier in May had to do with my May "Seasonal" Helles in a Hand Bock-sket.

Last year, while drinking Hand Bock-sket, I made the comment:

#WillDrinkInJune. Great bready malt character. Loving this beer. I think the only improvement I can think of is making it lower ABV ... But it wouldn't be a Maibock then 😎

I believe this was shortly after drinking a beer at Green Mountain Brewing Company that really reminded me of  Hand Bock-sket, but was lower in ABV. It's name was "AstroSuds Lager".

While a 5A. German Leichtbier isn't really anything like a lower ABV Maibock, it is sort of similar in that they are both German lagers.

Before my latest camping trip, I saw cans of AstroSuds Lager in Green Mountain's beer cooler, and I decided to pick up a four pack.

Around that time, I poured the Halfway to Helles Leichtbier and AstroSuds to compare side-by-side.

 

Big Brew Day ... Halfway to Helles (Batch 375)

It was the American Homebrew Association's annual Big Brew Day this past Saturday.

If you follow along on this blog, you may remember that Big Brew Day is quite often a day that the Beer Model and I brew with one or more our homebrewing friends "Du" and "Doc".

But, "Du" recently moved out of state and "Doc" was busy doing something else this year. So, the Beer Model and I did a brew day all by ourselves.

I had a Pork Butt thawed, and we decided to make a feast even though it was just the two of us.

If you are a regular on this blog, and were paying attention to the Roll-a-Style posts, you might actually have a guess as to which beer recipe we brewed:

Halfway to Helles Leichtbier

Roll-a-Style 3: 5A. German Leichtbier

If you follow this blog at all, you probably have read that I want to concentrate more on my BJCP Goal this year.

As of the time of this post, if I'm counting correctly, I've brewed 83 of the 108 styles in the 2021 BJCP Style Guidelines. Since the beginning of the year, I've already brewed 5 new BJCP styles (6 if you include Tasman Pilsner).

I have my Roll-a-Style list, which helps me keep track of styles that I still need to brew.

The idea is that I use a 20-sided online die to decide which style to brew next. However, sometimes, I have decided what I want to brew and "pretended" to roll the number I wanted to brew.

May is coming up, which would be a time to brew the "seasonal" Helles in a Hand Bock-sket, and I thought this year it would be fun to brew a lower ABV German Lager to replace the Hand Bock-sket beer.

The one lower ABV German Lager I still had on the list was 3, and I pretended to roll the online die ...