Why No Dry?

Since 2007, I have taken the month of January off the booze. This was before the concept of "Dry January" was even a thing, and I literally chose to take the month off because I felt like shit on New Year's Day and had decided I needed to lose some weight, and so no booze for a while was part of that plan. I actually ended up taking nearly 6 months off the beer, though with the occasional bottle of Frankovka, a Czech red wine, and losing an inordinate amount of weight prior to my first visit to the US that summer.

My month off became an annual tradition, one that I justified as being "the best way to lose the Christmas weight", and so it remained for most of the last 19 years. Most years I did indeed shed the pounds that I had gained by serious indulgence in the festive spirit, and by the end of the month I was eagerly anticipating my first beer of the year. This year I decided to change things.

In 2025 I hit the ripe middle age of 50, even seeing that in black and white looks a bit odd, but here we are. I am 50 years old and as might be reflected in the paucity of posts on Fuggled over the last several years, my drinking is slowing down. I have often said that I am a lousy beer tourist, even in my own area around Charlottesville, Virginia, I am not great at getting to all the breweries and wineries that surround. I have  a few favourite places that do the kind of beers I like, and I see no incentive to go and pay north of $8 a pint for styles I am just not bothered about.

Coming back to turning 50, it was as a result of my annual physical that it became clear that certain lifestyle choices needed to be changed. I need to get healthier in order to get certain numbers more on target than they were in October. To that end, I have already lost about 22lbs/10kg, which brings me back to my justification for taking a month off away from alcohol, it being the best way to lose the festive season weight gain.

I will be blunt and say that I was kind of dreading the holiday period, largely because I find it difficult to say no to many of the treats of the various feasts. I love Christmas cookies, fruit cake, mince pies, and of course I have to have the traditional Terry's Chocolate Orange. The main problem with all this is simple, I am sadly the only one in my household who loves these sweet treats. So every year I would bake a fruit cake, naturally soaking the dried fruit in a strong beer of some description then fed it whisky once a week for all of December, and would end up having to eat it all myself. I would buy a tin of Quality Street and then spend much of Christmas Day and Boxing Day munching through the assorted chocs and toffees, I was a master of gaining the Christmas weight.

That then is the change this year, I was sat pondering the shopping trip to World Market to stock up on the German Christmas treats that transport me back to my childhood in Celle - pfeffernuss, lebkuchen, stollen - when a thought popped into my head. How about just not gaining as much weight over the holidays, and not bothering with Dry January? As I mentioned above, I am down about 22lbs/10kgs since October, but that number was 30lbs/13.6kgs just before Christmas. I knew I would gain some weight as the usual rules went out of the window, but I mitigated that by not making my annual fruit cake, not splurging the cash at World Market to chase my youth, and saying no to a tin of Quality Street.

So no, this year I am not doing Dry January, I am getting back to the setup that has served me well since October, and within a couple of weeks I expect to be back to my pre-Christmas weight, ready to keep on going toward my target. On the flipside of this, I am also not embracing "Tryanuary", I will remain a shitty beer tourist, and my regular haunts will stay as such. 

So, happy 2026 folks!

Fuggled Virginia Cider of the Year

Turning my attention away from beer for a moment to finish up my booze review of 2025, we come to cider. Specifically, Virginia cider since that is the mainstay of my cider drinking world, and it would be disingenuous of me to have categories for outside of the Commonwealth.

Looking back over my notes for the year, I have also decided to cut back on the number of categories from last year. Out go "Flavoured" ciders and "Pommeau/Strong Cider", not because I haven't had any of those categories, but because I have really only had one of each. As nice as they were, and in the case of the Sage Bird Long Light superb, again it feels a little damning with faint praise to give them their own categories. So we have just the two:

• single varietal
• blended (including co-ferments)

Let's dive in...

Single Varietal

• Malus X Dolgo - Troddenvale, Warm Springs
• Virginia Hewes Crab - Big Fish Cider, Monterey
• GoldRush - Buskey Hard Cider, Richmond

Honorable mentions: Hazy Lady (Winesap) - Ciders from Mars, Staunton; Kingston Black - Sage Bird Ciderworks, Harrisonburg; Royal Pippin (Albemarle Pippin) - Albemarle Ciderworks, North Garden.

I mentioned last year that I could quite easily have had a category for single varietals of Virginia Hewes Crab ciders, but I wrote about that mass tasting for Cider Review recently. The highlight of that tasting, which features 6 examples from around Virginia is also the winner of the single varietal category, the one from Big Fish Cider over the mountains in Highland County. I described the cider as being "a pleasing blend of limes and lemons, set off by a green apple flavour that brings even more brightness" and that it is one "of life's most happy accidents" since the founder of Big Fish had intended to use it in blends, but it was too good not to shine alone. Every trip to Big Fish results in at least half a case of bottles clinking their way over switchbacks to Louisa County, and always, always, always their Virginia Hewes Crab is at least 2 of the 6. A cracking cider from one of my favourite cideries in the state.

Blends/Co-ferments

• House Cider - Troddenvale, Warm Springs
• Crab Apple Blend - Daring Cider, Stuart
• Maven - Ciders from Mars, Staunton

Honorable mentions: Foraged Cider - Troddenvale, Warm Springs; Cidermakers Choice #6 (Harrison and Dabinett) - Albemarle CiderWorks, North Garden; Crabbottom Pippin - Big Fish Cider, Monterey.

Back in November, I was privileged to be asked to speak on an author panel at the inaugural Cider Festival at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton - one of my favourite little cities in the entire world, and a wonderful open air museum too. At the festival there were several of the best cideries in Virginia pouring their wares for visitors. It was a wonderfully civilised way to spend an afternoon. My blended cider of the year was available at the festival, and I made a point to stock up on a few bottles, that may have lasted little more than a weekend. Jocelyn Kuzelka is a cider maker of supreme skill, and it is her Crab Apple Blend that takes the accolades. It is a pretty simple blend, being 75% Virginia Hewes Crab and 25% Ruby Red Crab Apple - a variety that is only found in a single orchard. The blend sings with red fruit notes and a lovely floral character that makes me think of meadows in spring, and there is a delicate sweetness in the background that just keeps it from being too bone shatteringly dry (not that that is a bad thing in my world though).

A pair of quite simply glorious ciders to select a single winner from, and in common with my annual beery review, this is an "award" that comes with no financial gain, or even a certificate to print off and put up on the wall. Both ciders grace my wine/cider fridge regularly, and so it really is difficult to separate them, but given that Big Fish's Virginia Hewes Crab won out in my big summer tasting of single varietals, I am going to given them the plaudits. It is an absolute must buy whenever I head over to Highland County - a gorgeous drive in and of itself - as well as something I will pick up in local bottle shops, and there are few better ways to spend a sunny afternoon, regardless of season, than on the back deck with a bottle or two of Big Fish's finest.

Fuggled Beer of the Year

Ok then, the choices have been made, the runners and riders whittled down to just three beers, a pale, a BOAB, and a dark, and final decision must be taken to crown the 2025 Fuggled Beer of the Year. As in years past, and most certainly in years yet to come, the present awarding of the title comes with little fanfare, and a miserly pot of coin - i.e. no coin whatsoever. It does come, however, with the knowledge that this little part of the internet appreciates your beer and will happily drink more of it in the future.

Our finalists then are:

• Pale: Spoolboy 10° -  Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville, VA
• BOAB: Altbier - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC
• Dark: Aecht Schlenkerla Erle - Heller-Bräu Trum, Bamberg, DE

I am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone, but since Spoolboy has been available on tap at Selvedge, it has basically become my go-to beer. Pretty much whenever I walk in, the folks behind the bar know what my, and Mrs V's, first beer of the visit will be, and so fresh pints of Spoolboy appear without really having to be asked for. In my world, this is the sign of superb service from people who get to know their regular customers. Do I drink Spoolboy to the exclusion of all else on tap at Selvedge at the moment? Do I heck, after all they also have a fantastic 12° lager, a Munich helles, a cracking little schankbier, a rauchbier, an Italian pilsner, an ordinary bitter, an oatmeal stout....you get the point. However, Spoolboy is our point of reference, the one we come back to time after time. Desítka - the Czech name for 10° lagers - holds a special place in my heart simply because it is the go-to type of beer back in Czechia, and whenever I get back there, it is predominantly desítky that I drink. Were Spoolboy available in any of the hospody and pivnice that I frequent then I would be drinking it there too.

Well made altbier is as rare as hens' teeth in my experience. When I say "well-made" I mean using the appropriate malts to get its characteristic colour and bready sweetness. You know, German malts. Sadly too many examples of the style are made with crystal malts and end up being slick and overly sweet. Given their commitment to authenticity in all their beers, Bierkeller's lovely Altbier avoids all those pitfalls, and is suitably bitter to boot. Absolutely laden with toasty warmth and a slight unsweetened cocoa edge in the background, coupled with a delightfully soft carbonation, that rounded out the mouthfeel, this was a beer that screamed out for a wood paneled kneipe rather than a sun-drenched balcony, but fit the moment perfectly anyway. Classic beer styles made properly never go awry in my world, and hopefully we'll see more of this whenever I next get to Bierkeller.

I have a confession to make, and here I may be in a minority of 1, I tend to be a little wary of buying Schlenkerla brews that are made with woods other than the classic beechwood. An example, while I think the Eiche Doppelbock is a very respectable beer, and I usually have a bottle or two in the cellar, I let them sit there for at least a year, so that the oakiness can dampen down a tad. So it was when I opened my first bottle of Erle, I was fully expecting to put the other three in the cellar until, well round about now as it happens. The other three swiftly joined the first bottle in an afternoon session of rauchschwarzbier, and it was a wonderful way to see out the throes of winter, with spring finally making an appearance. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I think there is still some of this floating around the bottle shops of central Virginia, so I better go get me some for the weeks ahead...

As in years past, these are three wonderful beers and making the decision to choose just one as the Fuggled Beer of the Year is really difficult. Fun fact, I have been writing reviews of the year now since 2010, with a break in 2017, and I think it shows just how far we have come in the US that properly made lagers now form the majority of my picks. Yes it is true that cold fermented beers are just so much more my thing than the IPAs, pastry stouts, and fruited sours of the craft beer world, but when I reflect back to the challenges of finding a halfway decent Czech or German style lager back in 2009, the standard has improved exponentially. One thing though that had never happened in the past was a brewery picking up Beer of the Year twice in a row, well that two in a row is becoming a three in a row, as Selvedge Brewing take the plaudits again, so congratulations to Josh and co for making beers like Spoolboy, they make this lagerboy's life all the more delightful.

Fuggled Beers of the Year: Dark

Given the inherent subjectivity of the BOAB category, it is always good to be back on more solid ground with dark beers, and I do love a good dark beer. That said, most of the dark beers I have drunk this year have been my own. In the spring I brewed my annual dry stout, imaginatively monikered "Virginia Stout", for Mrs V's fiddle teacher, who hosts a St Patrick's Day party every year, and it is just de rigueur to have a session stout at such events. In the summer I brewed a dark mild, again for a party, this time a birthday bash. Going through my records for non-VelkyAl brewed dark beers it is clear that the pickings are very slim...so I will pivot and just mention a single beer from each of the geographies, and name a winner.

Virginia

• Tweed Dunkel - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Back at Yuletide 2024, I rocked up to the bar at Selvedge - gasp, shock, horror - and was given a bottle of Tweed, kellerbier style, in that it had been bottled straight out of the lagering tank with still a few weeks to go before being ready for prime time. When I cracked it open during the interregnum between Christmas Day and New Year, I thoroughly enjoyed it and partly rejoiced that it would be coming on tap once I was done with January being a month off the booze. If memory serves, this is double decocted, and all those extra Maillard reactions pay off in the silky smooth, deeply toasty flavours and mouthfeel of what was a great start to the drinking year.

Rest of the USA

• Schwarzbier - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC

Among the various lager styles of the world, schwarzbier is the closest to my first beery love, dry stout. However, I think schwarzbier has an edge over stout in the wonderful effects of cold fermentation and long lagering giving the beer a crispness that showcases the roasty snap of dark malts. Anyway, it was summer, and we were in Columbia, en-route to Florida for beach week, when Bierkeller had their Schwarzbier on tap. It was probably obscenely hot in South Carolina, but this was a beer that simply worked because it is so damned tasty, roasty without being acrid, clean without being boring, and eminently drinkable, so I did, pretty often.

Rest of the World

• Aecht Schlenkerla Erle - Heller-Bräu Trum, Bamberg, DE

As I mentioned in the BOAB post, rauchbier is one of my favourite types of beer in the world, I love a good slap across the face of beechwood, so when I saw Schlenkerla Erle at Beer Run, I bought a few bottles. Erle is another schwarzbier, but this time made with malts kilned over alder wood. Alder couldn't be more different from beech, deeply earthy, yet delicately sweet as well, paired with the roastiness of a schwarzbier and what you have here is a beer that speaks to the rustic peasant in me. I can only imagine how revelatory it would be from a stichfaß in the Dominikanerklause.

While the pickings may be slim for this category, the quality is far from wanting. I could happily drink these three beers all year round, but one stands out just ahead of the others, by virtue of being the confluence of two of my favourite things in beer, dark lagers and rauchbier. Yes, the Fuggled Dark Beer of 2025 is the magnificent Aecht Schlenkerla Erle from Heller-Bräu Trum in Bamberg - a beer that thankfully is still in stock in several bottle shops round here and will be finding its way into my fridge again very soon.

Fuggled Beers of the Year: BOAB

Audience meet BOAB, BOAB meet audience. If it is your first time meeting BOAB, you might just need to know that it is Fuggled-speak for beers that are "between orange and brown", so anything from Vienna lagers to brown ale and everything in between, erm obviously as that is in the name. Onwards ho!

Virginia

• Tavern Brown Ale - Alewerks Brewing, Williamsburg
• Beech Blanket - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Loden Vienna Lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Honorable mentions: Threadenator; Houndstooth - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville; Fritz - SuperFly Brewing, Charlottesville; Wolf Gang Vienna Lager - Buffalo Mountain Brewing, Floyd.

Let's just get one thing out of the way Selvedge are going to dominate the Virginia lists for these reviews for the very simple reason I drink far more of their beer than any other brewery in Virginia. As I mentioned in a Vinepair article last year, they are knocking it out of the park, and if anything they are only getting better as Josh and gang get a full grip on their new brewing system.It may come as a surprise to some though that my Virginia BOAB beer of the year is not the magnificent Loden, but rather their rauchbier, Beech Blanket. I love rauchbier, to the extent that I am not interested in these silly little "hint of bacon" beers, hit me with lots of smoke! Beech Blanket is much more in the Spezial realm than Schlenkerla, and is absolutely redolent with pungent beech smoke, coupled though with a smooth drinkability that has made it a regular beer throughout this year. Also, fun fact, it makes a fantastic addition to many of Josh's pale lagers just to mix things up a bit.

Rest of the USA

• Altbier - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC
• Copper - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC
• Munzler's Vienna Lager - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC

Honorable mention: Little Nator - Tröeg's Brewing, Hershey, PA

It's pretty slim pickings in the rest of the USA section this year, largely because Mrs V and I haven't really got out and about the country much. Even with that said, the 3 selections here are all fantastic beers, but I have to choose just one, and that one is an example of one of my favourite styles, but first a story. The first time I had an example of this particular style from the place it originated, I was in Berlin, it was 2008 and Mrs V and I had gone to hang out with a friend. Wandering round that day we stumbled upon an art festival, and in the middle of festival was a mobile bar for Brauerei Schumacher in Düsseldorf. I was as giddy as a schoolboy to have my first real altbier actually from Düsseldorf as up to that point I had only had a version at Pivovar u Bulovky in Prague. Anyway, I fell in love with the style immediately, and it is still a bucket list item to drink Schumacher at source. The winner here though I drank in rather different circumstances, the kids were in bed, it was hot as hell in Florida, and so I went out to the balcony of the place we stay in and opened a one litre growler to Bierkeller Brewing's Altbier, and it was sublime. So good, I went and got my other growler of it, just to keep on drinking it. When we headed back north to Virginia, with a quick stop on Columbia, I stocked up. 

Rest of the World

• Pilsner Urquell - Plzeňský Prazdroj, Plzeň, CZ
• Oktober-Fest Märzen - Privatbrauerei Ayinger, Aying, DE
• Nut Brown Ale - Samuel Smiths Brewery, Tadcaster, UK

Again with the slim pickings, a combination of drinking mostly locally brewed beers and having really upped my homebrew game the last couple of years. The international BOAB beer of the year though is one whose arrival in the stores signifies the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, which by itself gives the game away. Ayinger are such a solid choice for German beer, though I wish I understood their production codes to work out the age of some of their beers, when it comes to seasonals though I worry less. I realise Oktober-Fest is not an official beer for the festival itself, but in my mind it captures the essence of a great festbier, hefty but not cloying, distinctive but not wacky, I relish every bottle I get my hands on.

Ah....decisions, decisions. Three great beers, three fantastic styles. Ultimately though, I have had a long affair with the winning style, ever since trying it for the first time in Prague (the suspense must be erm, well, suspenseful given I had all three styles for the first time in Prague)...but the winner is the style that won my heart ultimately in a park in Berlin. Yeah, altbier is just something I love and lament in almost equal measure given the scarcity of the style in the US. So, the BOAB beer of 2025 is the superb example of the style from Columbia's Bierkeller, a brewery that I recently highlighted in an article for Vinepair as one of the best in the US.

Fuggled Beers of the Year: Pale

It's that time of the year, the Winter Solstice is upon us, and what better to do than to review a year's worth of drinking? As has become my own tradition, I will break this down into multiple posts, one for pale beer, one for BOAB ("between orange and brown", and dark, and then an overall beer of the year, as well as one for Virginia cider of the year.

As I have done for several years now, I will highlight beers from Virginia, the rest of the US, and the rest of the world before crowning each category winner, so on with the show...

Virginia

• Spoolboy 10° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Chain Stitch Helles - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Coat Czech 12° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Honorable mentions: Ten - Sojourn Fermentory, Suffolk; Pylon Pilsner - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Voda Czech style Pilsner - Caboose Brewing, Vienna; Vested Interest - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville.

A clean sweep for the brewery I visit far more than any other, but in my defense, Josh makes beers that are simply delightful and would grace any kneipe, keller, hospoda, or hostinec throughout Central Europe. I didn't write my annual Top 10 Virginian Beers this summer, but it would have been overwhelmingly Selvedge Brewing products. All that said, even choosing one from the three mentioned is a monumentally difficult task as on any given time I am at Selvedge at the moment it is pretty much a given that I will be rotating through the three of them. Even so...I can only choose one, and that is the one that both Mrs V and I pretty much immediately order when we sit down, the one that both of us have raved about to friends, acquaintances, and anyone within earshot willing to listen, the one that takes both of us back to our spiritual home in Czechia. Spoolboy, the most perfect desítka imaginable, and one that I wish I could sit and drink with Evan, Max, and co back in Prague.

Rest of the USA

• Notch Pils - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA
• Gold - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX
• Urhell - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC

Honorable mentions: Bavarian Pilsner - Von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT; Pilsner - New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO; Captain Jack Pilsner - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC; Pilz - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX; Kirkland Lager - Deschutes Brewing, OR

Despite being an abysmal beer tourist, as I have mentioned many a time in the past, when I do get to travel for work, I always make sure to find some time to unwind in a local brewery with a decent lager selection. I am sorry folks, but if you haven't worked out that pale lagers are my go-to beer style, and have been for many years, you simply haven't been paying attention. Probably my favourite annual trip to to a conference in Austin, Texas, that gives me the opportunity to get to Live Oak Brewing. So it was this spring, myself and colleagues rolled up and spent an excellent few hours in the tap room enjoying the many fine beers on offer. It was much to my delight that they had just tapped this year's batch of Gold, a Bavarian style pilsner that is, in my as ever unhumble opinion, the best pilsner that Live Oak brews. Yes I love Pilz, but Gold is just a nose ahead in my mind, and so I enjoyed plenty of it.

Rest of the World

• La Fin du Monde - Unibroue, Canada
• Jura - Pivovar Chroust, Czechia
• Tannenzäpfle - Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus, Germany

Sadly no foreign trips this year for me, so my international drinking has been limited to whatever I could find in the store, or in the case of the winner, something new and exciting that I hadn't expected to see at ChurchKey on a business trip to DC. Also, a fun fact, the beer in question comes from a part of Prague that many, many moons ago, I actually very close to, as in just one metro stop away. Obviously then the international pale beer of the year is Jura from Pivovar Chroust in Prague. As I say, I was sitting in ChurchKey, perusing the beer list and my eyes were drawn to the word "Jura" partly because I had just bought a couple of bottles of Jura whisky and was surprised to see that collection of letters in a beer list. What followed was a fantastically bracing, bitter 12° Czech pale lager that was an exceedingly happy surprise.

Three fantastic examples of Central European pale lagers in the Plzeň tradition, but obviously I can choose but one. That one will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me, or follows my Instagram, it is the one that come the end of this week I will be drinking having finished work for the year. Yes, then the Fuggled Pale Beer of 2025, a prize still unencumbered with the grubbiness of filthy lucre and commercial considerations is Selvedge's magnificent Spoolboy 10° Czech Pale Lager, a beer I will miss deeply when this batch is gone, and then I will begin my campaign to bring it back as soon as possible.

Morana: Tmave's Birthday in America

This Thursday is the 15th anniversary of the day I spent at Devils Backbone Basecamp brewing the first ever batch of Morana, a Czech style dark lager that I designed for them. I had spent the previous months diving into archives, emailing with multiple brewers, and beer experts, in various languages - English, German, Czech, and Slovak - to learn everything I could about a family of beers that at the time only consisted of about 5% of Czech beer production. Obviously, having only fairly recently decamped from Prague to Virginia, I was also relying on my own remembrances of beers that I had got a taste for in the last couple of years there, when I moved beyond the realms of Gambrinus, Staropramen, and Velkopopovivký Kozel.

My go-to dark lagers at the time were brewed by Kout na Šumavě and available at the fantastic U Slovanské lipy, but it was the 14° version that I was using as my model for Morana. They also had an 18° that as a 0.3l malé pivo made for a wonderful nightcap.

Back in 2010, Czech style dark lager wasn't an accepted "style" on sites that advocated for the rating of beer and it didn't exist in the BJCP style guidelines until 2015. Fun fact, there is a post in BeerAdvocate in which I pointed out that tmavé is different from both schwarzbier and dunkel and thus deserved it's own category, a point met with howls of "too many styles" already, meanwhile black IPA had a moment in the sun and immediately got recognition from the gatekeeping banshees mods.

From my research and deep diving since, I am convinced that Morana was in fact the first authentic Czech style dark lager brewed in the modern American craft brewing industry. By "authentic" here I mean using appropriate ingredients and methods, so yes it has always been double decocted, as well as giving it the time to lager extensively. When it was first released, I was transported, Anton Ego style, back to the pubs of Žižkov, Nusle, and Karlín. It has since been brewed about half a dozen times, and as Jason and co have invested in open fermenters, horizontal lagering tanks, and the like, it has got better and better with every brewing.

All of this came rushing back to me this last weekend, as I was lazily scrolling through the Memories feature on Facebook and saw something mentioned about looking forward to being at the brewery to help make the first batch. With that in mind, I changed my homebrew plans for this weekend, out went my next batch of Vienna lager, and in came a 15th anniversary brew of Černý Lev, my homebrew version of Morana.

Previous batches have used the traditional German malts from Weyermann, but as you may know if you've been following my social media for a while, I am committed to using my local malting company, Murphy & Rude, for all my malt needs. As such, a slight redesign was required. My grist for this weekend then is:

• 75% Virginia Pils
• 10% CaraMel Light (similar to CaraVienne)
• 10% Munich 9
• 5% Cimmerian Black (similar to Carafa III Special)

For the hopping, I am of course using Saaz for flavour and aroma, but going with Sterling for bittering:

• 16 IBU Sterling for 60 minutes
• 9 IBU Saaz for 30 minutes
• 6 IBU Saaz for 15 minutes

For the yeast, good old W34/70 is getting to chew through the planned 14° wort to hopefully give me an ABV of around 5.6%. Brewfather says that 34/70 has an apparent attention of 81%, but going through my notes on previous brews, I average about 75% so I am not too worried about drying it out.

One major change from the last time I brewed this recipe is that I will be doing a decoction mash, in this case a double decoction, as I outlined in this post last year.

Once the yeast has done it's thing, it will get 42 days at near zero before being tapped in my kitchen as the first homebrew beer of 2026, on February 1st. The last 14 days of that will be gently, and slowly, carbing in the kegerator - though I am toying with the idea of getting a spunding valve and letting it carbonate naturally...

If this batch turns out like previous batches of Černý Lev, I will be very happy.