2014: The Big Year in Beer

At the beginning of 2014, I took a pledge to participate in the Big Year in Beer. Part contest, part endurance effort, and all fun, I had no idea what I was getting into.

Here we are on New Year’s Day 2015, and suffice to say I lost the contest worse than Florida State lost the Rose Bowl. But it doesn’t matter. I tasted, quaffed, hoisted, sipped and sampled 642 unique beers last year. That wasn’t easy.

I learned a lot about my own tastes, and gained a ton of knowledge as a homebrewer about all kinds of nuanced flavors and elements I can apply to my own beers. This next year, my new beer’s resolution is to make more and buy less.

Oh and as a bonus, I lost about five pounds in 2014. Training for a surf (and beer tasting) trip helped, it turns out.

Top takeaways:

– Yeast is underrated. If you’re ever in the San Diego area, you must visit White Labs. It’s part scientific laboratory and purveyor of fine strains to home and pro brewers alike, and all beer-nerd nirvana. Their tasting room is incredibly interesting and the menu is amazing, offering variations of beers made of different yeast from the same wort. In other words, you can have a flight of IPAs that are all essentially the same base beer but they’re fermented with different yeast strains, thus making the each beer taste very different.

– Tasting is fun. You don’t need to have 12 ounces or a pint to have a beer. Variety is a virtue, especially in this day of brewer experimentation and ABV boundary-pushing. You can’t have many full glasses of 12% imperial stout.

– I re-discovered old friends. Beers I had largely forgotten about like stouts, porters and Belgians came back with newfound appeal, largely thanks to the tasting-friendly format of the contest.

– I like new stuff. I already liked tart beer, sours and wine-barrel fermented farmhouse ales. Now I love them and have a renewed appreciation of them.

– I still love pale ales and IPAs. I gravitate toward hoppy beer. It helps on trips to San Diego and Portland which are hophead capitals of the west coast.

– I made my best-ever beer this year. Not to brag, but I made a killer citra pale ale (twice – once with oak added) and a great imperial stout at the end of the year (also a split batch with half of it on oak). Exploring beer through tasting and pushing your own ideas about what makes for great beer helps you make better beer.

My favorite beers? That’s tough, but let’s give a few shout-outs:

• Not a beer, but a tasting room. Base Camp Brewing in Portland, Oregon is the most beautiful and inspiring brewery and beer tasting room I’ve ever been in. It’s not to be missed. And yes, they also make damn fine beer.
• Sante Adarius Rustic Ales is my favorite brewery in the SF/Santa Cruz Bay Area, though I knew that before this year. They’re doing unique stuff and killing on all levels, from IPAs to sours. If you’re in Capitola, do stop in. It’s always a great time and communal vibe.
• Pliny the Elder is still the best DIPA I’ve ever had, but some honorable mentions exist: Knee Deep’s 138 fresh off a tap is excellent, Bear Republic Apex is probably my second-favorite, and Calicraft’s The City is a bomb.
• Newest loved variety (according to me): Imperial red ales. A mashup between IPAs and red ales, these were made by many but mastered by few including Santa Clara Valley Brewing Co. and Speakeasy.
• Favorite beer (maybe): Duvel Tripel Hop. A saliva-sucking hop-filled IPA combined with one of the best Belgian beers in the world for a special edition ale that was unlike any other Belgian beer I’ve ever had. And I had it in a NYC Belgian beer bar which made it all the more special. My next batch of homebrew will be a Belgian pale — I’m inspired by the yeast.

 

So that’s it. Here’s my full list with a handful of tasting notes. Thanks to friends Chris Dodge for starting this crazy thing, and Chris Wilder for pushing me into it. I lost, and yet I won. Everyone won. The real winners (Dodge and Wilder) are iron men.

And right now I’m enjoying a glass of grenache to ring in the New Year.