Beers Brewed Index

Note: this page is, at the moment, incomplete and very much under construction. I’ll remove this notice when it is finalized… hopefully before I start brewing again!  In the meantime, I can say that my brewing logs on Brewtoad probably are a bit more accurate in terms of timing, though I’m not sure why some of the brews are listened as happening in 2013: those were in 2012, or didn’t happen at all. I’ll also be using my brew logs from my blog to fill out this list.

When it is complete, there will be links to all logged brews; for brews that were not logged, if there is a recipe at Brewtoad that will be linked instead. Then I’ll try work my way through my brewlogs and add pictures for those brews which I can actually identify: in my digital photo archive, I have photos of practically every beer I ever brewed, but the identity of each one isn’t exactly apparent from the picture, though the dates might help.

Which is also a lesson learned: in future, I will need to be more organized about handling photos of brews and posting reviews of my outcomes. That should be a lot easier now; while I like the freedom (and the brute power) of Linux, I didn’t find it particularly conducive to being organized,or getting stuff done. Mac OSX has more tools for doing that stuff automatically, instead of me having to do it manually. We’ll see, of course…

 

Brewlog, or, Every Beer I’ve Ever Brewed

For those who don’t brew, it may seem odd, but personally I want to have an index of all the beers I’ve made. It can be useful for tracking down beers, or for retracing my steps through the process of learning. I’ll be adding links for each brew to the post about that batch, to make this list easily navigable.

Contents:

  • 2009 (The Year I Started)
  • 2010 (The Year I Learned)
  • 2011 (The Year I Nailed It Down)
  • 2012 (The Year I Brewed Like Mad)
  • 2013 (First Hiatus Year)
  • 2014 (Second Hiatus Year)

2009:

This was the year I started brewing. I pretty much got into beer as a result of starting brewing, ironically: I’d encountered craft brew only occasionally before, and it had never registered in my consciousness. But somehow, I got curious, and that indefatigable smile Charlie Papazian wore in all the pictures in the third edition of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing convinced me to give it a shot. I made all the dumb beginner mistakes… well, almost all of them. But then I put them behind me.

  • Whoops! Stout (Kit Stout)
    • My first kit beer. A disaster, by my standards today: I didn’t realize I had to add any fermentables, and ended up with a thin, if tasty, 2% dark stout beer. However, the woman I would eventually marry loved the stuff.
  • Jeju Kyulpicha Wheat Beer (Kit wheat beer)
    • Added mandarin orange peels, though it made no difference at all.
  • Cafe au Stout (Coffee Stout, kit stout)
    • A coffee stout, with the coffee added at the end of the boil. It was undrinkable for months… and then it was heavenly.
  • Gula Gula IPA (IPA made with Indonesian sugar)
    • A kit IPA… to which I added unrefined Indonesian palm sugar, and hops. Except it was a kit hopped for IPA levels of bitterness, so… well, it took a while before it was drinkable.

2010:

For me, this year was about learning the process of all-grain brewing, of recipe design, and especially experimentation. It was during this year that I seemed to gain a reputation as an experimentalist brewer in the Seoul Brew Club, and started to play a part in events in Seoul. I was still very much learning how to brew effectively, and working out which equipment setup suited me, but I was also starting to get impressive results… even some of my mistakes, like my On a Jag Abbey Dubbel Quadrupel (made with unrefined Indian “jaggery” sugar, and which somehow ended up with twice the fermentables intended–don’t ask me how), were interesting in this year.  It was also when I started trying my hand at mead-making, to positive results.

  • Cherry Chocolate Stout
  • Mash Aigre (Sour BPA)
  • JAO (mead)
  • Bangkok Summer Pilsner Pale
  • On a Jag Abbey Dubbel Quadrupel
  • Tan Belgian Pale
  • Abbey Wheat
    • 2G fruited with with “hongssi” persimmons
    • 1G fruited with “bokbunja” (Korean black raspberry)
  • All Brett Night at the Amarillo
  • Gentle Haejeok Oatmeal Stout
  • Bokbunja Melomel (Korean black raspberry mead)
  • First Attempted Parti-Gyle:
    • Belgian Golden Strong Ale
    • On a Jag Abbey Dubbel
    • Supposedly Sour Pseudo-Sahti
  • Le Premier Fois Saison

Missing:

  • BERLINER WEISSE? CHECK LOGS! I made twice, it’s not on this list even once!

 

2011:

For me, 2011 was the year I really locked things in, and started producing kinds of beer I hadn’t even been able to imagine. Part of the inspiration came during a trip to Italy, where I experienced some of the Italian craft beer scene–an amazing, wonderfully Belgian-influenced scene, though it wasn’t completely absent of American craft beer influence. Part of it was that I had my process nailed down to the point where I could relax a little. Part of it was that I had all the books and resources I needed to pursue a more freestyle, experimental approach to brewing…. and part of it was that I was now brewing to impress myself. And I did!

  • Pseudo-Kvass
  • La Corée en a Quatre (Saison)
  • Belgian Brewday: L’identité Secrète (“Super” Saison)
  • St. Vitus of Cascadia RyePA
  • Bavarian Weizen
  • TripelIPA (Belgian IPA) — 3rd Place in Brew Your Hops Off competition, Seoul, 2011.
  • Birthday Cyser (Apple Juice Mead)
  • For the Nonce ESB
  • Not So Mild Northern Brown Ale
  • Mild Mannered Gentleman (Mild)
  • Wonmisan Wit
  • Partigyle:
    • Miss Jiwaku’s Holiday Stout
    • Miss Jiwaku’s Old Ale
  • Shiktakju (Belgian Enkel)
  • Partigyle:
    • Oldboy (Old Ale)
    • Fenian Raid (Stout/Brown Ale)
  • Raison (Rye Saison)
  • Split Batch, late hop experiment:
    • Ship O’ Boons I (APA)
    • Ship O’ Boons II (Belgian Pale Ale)
  • Pomegranate Melomel (pomegranate juice mead) — small batch
  • Mint Metheglin (mint tea mead) — small batch
  • Mittelfruh Metheglin (hopped mead) — small batch
  • Vaporizer (California Common “Steam” Ale)
  • Letters from Lichtenhain (Lichtenhainer)
  • Partigyle with students (teaching brewing to students):
    • CUK APA
    • CUK Lime Leaf Saison
  • Partigyle (Xmas Brews):
    • Fruitcake Ale
    • Sour Dark Saison
  • Chicha Jora
  • Gluten Free Beer
  • “Old Thin Man” (Apple Cider)
  • Split Batch:
    • Competition Pale Ale (3rd place in the Brew a Bukhansan Pale Ale contest, Seoul, 2011)
    • Sour Belgian Pale Ale
  • Sooper Sekrit Pastafarian Brew (Brewed with Rowan Chadwick)

2012:

This year was a year of extremely intense brewing: I probably brewed too much, evidenced by the fact that when I left Korea, I ended up leaving several half-full kegs with my friend Rowan to consume and enjoy. There were a couple of brewing highlights for the year, though: one was forming a brewing team with my friends Rowan Chadwick and Ian Lynch, named “For We Are Men!” and brewing a couple of locally award-winning beers with them. We also brewed several kegs of beer for the wedding party I held with my wife in early 2013.

2013:

2013 was the year my wife and I got married, hosted a Lovecraft film fest, put together a complete short zombie movie, and I helped organize (and competed in) the Brewers’ Throwdown… all before the end of February. It was bananas. Then we left Korea before the end of March–the first time I’ve moved out of the same building in which I’d lived for seven years, and my first move overseas in over a decade.

Which is to say, it was a busy winter/spring, in other words, and I sold off my brewing gear to my friend Rowan, moved to Vietnam, and brewed no more… temporarily. I learned something this year, though, and that was: too much equipment can be as inhibiting as too little. When Rowan left my place with the gear he’d bought, it filled the back of a small truck, and there’s just no way that’s a sensible or necessary amount of equipment for a hobby. Both in terms of expense and clutter, accumulating that much stuff was simply a big mistake… one I won’t repeat. When I start brewing again, I will be very selective about equipment, and only buy what’s truly necessary. A minimalist approach is a sensible one, I think. However: if you have soda kegs in decent condition, and you can put them in storage instead of selling them, do so. I can’t believe I sold off all my corny kegs. Ah well.

Anyway, somehow I did manage a few actual brewdays before shutting up shop for good:

  • Wonmisan Brochet (made with Rowan Chadwick, and a terrifying experience it was!)
  • Split Batch:
    • Wonmisan Last Hurrah Hoppy Weizen (served at the Brewers’ Throwdown)
    • Wonmisan Kitchen Sink Dubbel (left behind with Rowan)

2014:

No brews logged. Nothing!

I was tempted to try my hand at brewing in Vietnam, and I even got some airlocks and a gravitometer during a visit to Seoul… but equipment was simply too difficult to track down in Vietnam: I couldn’t even find the kind of glass or HDPE containers that can be gotten easily in any dollar shop in Seoul, let alone silicon tubing or brewing ingredients. Heck, I couldn’t even find a medicine dropper at any of the local pharmacies, for dosing hop extract into commercial lagers, though I had everything else necessary to do that.

As a result, I pretty much just stuck to other things, especially writing… and it was probably a very good thing for my waistline. Still, I also continued quietly building a list of planned recipes I am going to get to sooner or later!

2015:

Watch this space…