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I listened to The Full Pint Podcast recently while down in Tucson about their 2022 year end episode with predictions about the craft beer scene for 2023. Some of the main topics they discussed were 1) Beer Festivals are goings away, no profit for the breweries 2) hard to make money today running a new brewery 3) Memberships and super pricey special release beers from breweries will not sell like they used to. There are no "whales" anymore, nothing is special anymore. This culminated with the demise of Modern Times, whereby their special club membership has essemntially died off when the brewery crashed and burned. I hit 4 breweries in Tucson on a Saturday afternoon and I would say they were all pretty much dead. There were people there but still overall pretty slow. Seems like it would be tough to turn a profit with so many breweries in so many cities. Maybe there will be a consalidation of brands and we will see fewer breweries soon? Who knows but I could see this happening.... What do you think??

I was thinking about a simple method for brewers who use the stovetop and biab/pot for small batches. For the mash, why not buy an affordable inkbird fridge controller and plug the heating element into the controller. Then set it at 152F or whatever temp you want and it will automatically cycle on and off as needed during the mash. Another option is a sous vide stick set to temp, it will heat the wort as needed to maintain temps automatically

Spring came early this year in NC (...already hit 80F during the last week of Feb in Durham!), so I started to crave a nice Helles Bock. Trouble was, I didn't want to wait the usual time it takes to ferment and condition a traditional lager. I posted earlier about how it took a full 8 weeks for my fest lager to clean up in the fall. The way things are going this year, it will be way too hot in 8 weeks to want to drink a Helles Bock! So...I decided to brew up a "Faux Bock." Nothing fancy other than to ferment quickly with an ale yeast and see what happens. I used pretty much the same recipe posted by Brulosophy (https://brulosophy.com/2020/04/30/short-shoddy-helles-bock/ ) with the exception of the change to Fermentis S04 ale yeast and whatever grains were available at my local homebrew store since they didn't have the Mecca Estate malts. By the way, I'm a big fan of the Brulosophy "short and shoddy" methods as they make for a quick brew day - I did a 45 min mash on this one followed by a 30 min boil. Fermentation was finished in around 3-4 days, but I let it go a full week before cold crashing. A couple days later and it was time for a taste test - this just 10 days after brew day! OG of 1.067 and FG of 1.010 for an ABV of around 7.4%. So...what about the results? I think this turned out really well! It has most of the characteristics of a true Helles Bock. Grainy with moderate sweetness and a bit of alcohol warmth on the finish given the final ABV. Recipe called for a final gravity of around 1.016, and I attribute the overshoot there to the much more attenuating S04 yeast than the traditional lager yeast. Would it have been more true to style had I stuck with the traditional methods? Undoubtedly. Is it still a delicious beer that captures most of the characteristics of the intended style? I think so! Anyway, let me know if you try a similar method. A proper "exBeeriment" would have been to split the batch in two and ferment half with the ale yeast and half with the lager yeast, but who has time for that? Actually...I do know, and its Martin Keen of the Brulosophy You Tube channel! (https://www.youtube.com/@TheBrulosophyShow) - sounds like a suggestion for a future episode! Cheers!