The licensing process for a commercial brewing business in India is the part that most aspiring brewery founders underestimate most severely.
Beer blending is the skill that shifted my brewing from making individual batches to thinking about beer as a palette.
Gruit ale was the beer that predated hops — brewed across Europe for centuries using a blend of herbs called gruit as both bittering and preserving agents.
Belgian Kriek is the most satisfying sour beer project I’ve undertaken — not because it’s easy, but because the finished product is genuinely unlike anything commercially available at a reasonable price.
English Barleywine is the style I associate most with patience — both in the brewing and the drinking. My first batch was nearly undrinkable at three months, tolerable at six, good at twelve, and genuinely excellent at eighteen.
Chocolate Milk Stout is the style that gets the most first-pour requests at any gathering I bring homebrew to.
Rye IPA was the style that taught me how dramatically a single malt substitution changes a beer’s character.
Bière de Garde is a French farmhouse ale that I came to through a detour — I was brewing Saison and a friend asked why I never made the French version.
Fruited sour ales are the style category where I’ve had more failures and more successes than any other.
Belgian Quadrupel is the pinnacle of what I think brewing can achieve: a beer that tastes like it shouldn’t exist, where 10–12% ABV is completely hidden behind layers of dark fruit, chocolate, plum, and complex spice.