The only regulars that I try to always have one or the other on hand are Pils and Kolsch. The Brewmistress loves them and I dig 'em too.
I’m quite like most of the other posters.
I have 4 taps, and I like to split them up as follows:
1). American/hoppy - IPA, DIPA, APA, Amber, Am Brown
2). Lighter/session - Pilsner, Dortmunder, Helles, Witbier
3). Brown/dark or malty - Am Oatmeal Stout, Robust Porter, Vienna, Dunkel, Marzen
4). Wildcard - here’s where i brew the experimental recipes or not quite so often ones, usually a big beer. currently a doppelbock.
I brew my IPA, Pilsner, Amber a few times per year, everything else listed most likely annually, and then I try to have 4-5 things on my list to brew for the year that are different from my usual cast.
Very much like you I’ve come to a point where my “everything and kitchen sink” beer experiments are slowing down and I’m enjoying a good ESB or Pils. I always keep on tap an ESB, and Irish Red (for my good friend and boss), and an experimental beer of the week.
This is pretty much how we roll too.
I do this as well, but for me it is driven by seasonal temperatures. Since it is the dead of Winter, I am brewing lagers. I just brewed my Czech Dark Lager to the day a year after the last one. Before I grasped that my beer just wasn’t all that good when made in the summer, I would brew anything at any point in the year. This lead me to some mediocre results, but the good thing that occurred is that I experimented with a lot of different malts/hops/yeasts. Now, I have a pretty good grasp on what I like and why, allowing me to more intelligently design recipes. This includes when I should brew something.
I also had a goal of buying fewer ingredients last year, and I think making a schedule, and brewing regulars helps with that.
I have settled in to attempting repeatability.
I am working on perfecting:
- Agave wheat
- Irish red
3.ESB
4.RyePA - New Zealand hopped IPA
This is the hardest yet probably best thing I think I could do as a brewer. I do have a few recipes I have done 3 or 4 times, but that was me just also trying to dial in my system. Each time the beers have come out different and perhaps flawed due to one reason or another. I really want to make a rocking American Wheat so I can add fruit to it each time and it doesnt get boring.
CHeers bro!
I have a very short list of beers I have brewed multiple times. I have too many different styles I want to try brewing. Every time I think, “okay, this is the year I am going to hone down a few recipes to always keep on hand,” I end up coming up with too many other beers I want to brew. Heck, I’m already thinking into 2015 projects.
Ideally I would like to hone a set of recipes so each year I produce a couple of the same beers each season, one really big beer for the year, and a couple sour beers, and then 3-4 random other beers. That would be about one brew per month.
I spent 2-3 years brewing just about everything, at a rate of about one batch a week. Exhausting, but I figured out what I really enjoy and what I’m good at so I think it was worth it.
that time is over now, mostly successful with a few spectacular failures as exceptions (haven’t made a passable 11B yet and no plans to do so). I spend most of my effort making the same fairly dry and somewhat to very bitter lagers, hybrids, and ales. 1E, 2A, 4C, 6C, 10B, 12B, 14B, 16B. Experimentation at this point is mostly on the mead/cider fronts and the occasional weird saison.
I have pretty much settled on these beers as “regulars”. I probably won’t brew each one that often but 3 of them should be on tap at any one time. I figure I have years and years to develop the recipes and make them consistent and delicious. I have brewed 3 of the 5 at least 3 times up to this point.
Session Ale
Blonde with lime and lemongrass
American Wheat
Oatmeal Pale Ale
Kolsch with American hops
I will likely brew these once a year as “seasonals”:
Hoppy Saison - Spring/Summer
Harvest Ale - Fall
Black Ale - Winter
This year will be the year of small beers and lagers for me. I recently gained access to full pitches of lager yeast from the local brewery so there is no excuse for not using the rest of the cool winter weather to my advantage and figure this thing out.
And my wife informed me that, while my big beers are pretty much on mark, the small beers are still lacking a certain spark so here’s to sparking some small beers!
no regular line up so much as a regular line up of lessons to be learned.
I’ve got a short list of recipes that I’ve returned to numerous times which tend to follow the spectrum of hoppy, roasty, malty categories that many here mention. My goal now is to go “hop independent” and brew variations of these recipes (american ipa, altbier, porter, am wheat or blond, bitter/esb) using the hops from my ever-growing hop yard. Just finishing up the few ounces of commercial hop pellets (mostly for just bittering) that I’ve got over the next few brews.
With my recently installed nitro line, I now have a lineup that is starting to feel about right:
- Nitro beer - Usually something a bit darker and lighter something like an English Mild with a twist on it.
- Lighter (Color) Hoppy Lager - Generally a Pils of some sort or a hopped up Vienna.
- Darker Lager - Usually a Dunkle or Bock
- Random - Barrel stuff, sour stuff, high octane lagers.
Basically lagers abound.