My resolution is to stop F’ing with my recipes. I’ve spent years trying to brew the perfect stout, Porter, brown, etc. and as soon as I create one I really enjoy I make a change and screw it up.
i know what you mean - i think of it as my time to dial things in after a lot of experimentation. time to make my brewing more efficient in terms of likely success vs. experimentation
Yeah, I get caught in this cycle myself. I like to experiment, but if I do it too much I get stuck with a string of *meh* beers and start to lose a bit of interest in brewing.
To that point, my first resolution is to get a non-experimental IPA on tap ASAP. I've been playing with a lot of advanced hop products lately and the resulting IPAs haven't really been doing it for me.
My second resolution is to have more patience with certain beer styles. I had an ESB on tap that took nearly 3 months to hit its prime. I actually brewed a beer to replace it because I was planning on dumping it. Afterwards, I retasted it and realized it had become fantastic. I had some friends over for the holidays and that keg kicked in a couple hours. Usually it's my lager and IPA taps that go quickly, but this time it was the ale.
My third resolution is to rebrew that ESB and see if it turns out just as well. I rarely brew the exact same recipe as-is, but I kind of want to confirm that this is worth "locking in" as a base recipe before I make tweaks to it in the future.