I think that in order to improve at something you like to do, it helps to have an area of focus. Rather then trying to broad brush all your efforts everything, I believe it's more beneficial to try to specialize in an area. Granted, if you focus all your time on specializing you will limit yourself. The trick is to find a good balance on overall knowledge while at the same time perfecting your craft in a specialized area.
The speicalized area I want is Wheat. Since I had my first
Steven's Point White, I've always been attracted to the unique flavor and characteristics of wheat beers. From the Belgian Wit to the German Hefe, I've grown to love most wheat beers that I've tried. My favorites being
Hoegaarden and
Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse.
Leah and I finished this Franzi boot off in the Dells!
However, one problem arises with this. The basic extract brewing we've done now, will not work as well with some of the grains needed to produce these beers. I'm going to have to make a
Partial Mash Tun. Since Leah and I cannot afford (let alone fit in our house) an all grain system. I think this is a great way to get into more of the grain aspects of brewing without the money and space of all grain.
The blueberry wine was bubbling like crazy last night! Since this is our first primary fermentation in a glass container, it was neat to see the CO2 being produced and escaping.
I also wanted to post a picture of our guest bedroom/secondary fermentation chamber! The Kolsch is on the right and the Irish Red on the left. (The pic looks darker then it really is.)
Great commentary on specialization of a broad subject. I totally agree with you and while I think brewing anything and everything has its advantages, it is much more beneficial to the overall goal if you can nail down certain styles of brewing one by one. I've had similar thoughts and feel that I'm best suited to focus my energies on European style ales (stouts, browns, reds). It's great to have differing but still similar interests.
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