Although I didn’t list it here, I only had one goal for 2017: find 10 new country ticks.
Ended up bagging 25, including some rarish ones such as Abkhazia (a local Abkhazian restaurant opened and started importing beer, thus saving me a trip to Abkhazia), Turkmenistan (a fellow ratebeerian kindly exchanged one of the Turkmen lagers he got from an acquaintance), and Northern Cyprus, which I actually visited.
In 2018 I’d like to find 20 more countries (taking me to 115), but it’s hard to see where they will come from. Got Iran lined up, and hopefully I’ll make a trip to Nagorno-Karabakh (or Artsakh as it is known these days) and pick up their single beer that is listed here, plus another that isn’t on ratebeer, if it’s still being made.
Second goal would be to once again become the biggest rater of Russian breweries. Currently in second place (and 20 breweries behind). It’s by no means a hard task, but requires a lot of free time (which I don’t have) to seek out beers by minor craft brewers and regional macros, and visit brewpubs.
Third goal is to hit 50 Armenian rates by taking a trip there to check out the local craft scene, which only appeared this year. And if that isn’t possible, at least continue to be the biggest rater of Armenian beers (and there aren’t many, to be honest).
Be #1 unique NY brewery eater - nope and moved out of state not happening
Try every RI brewery - not yet
Get 10 of every non-beer style - need a few more sakes but NYC has much more availability then where I now live.
Progress on 15 of every style, new regions, countries - light progress on all fronts.
Qualify for Ultimate New Englander award - I posted this award every year in New England forum but no longer exists so maybe Site News anyways no luck here either.
It looks like I hit two out of three: Over 100 Geuze rates and Over 500 place rates.
I started heavily country-ticking this year and just hit 150 with two more on the way. Increasing that as much as possible will probably be my main goal for next year.
Hit 5k - which would allow me to miss one or the other festival and tune down my ticking pace a bit.
6.4k and counting. No tuning down at all, though…
Finish my ongoing Schlenkerla Grand Slam, i.e. get all their seasonals from the Holzfass within one year. I started with Kräusen in August, and only miss Fastenbier. Maybe I can do a double cycle?
I missed Urbock - it was worth it, though (I visited other Franconian breweries on the weekend I meant to do Urbock…)
Make it to 100 De Molen beers, or maybe any brewery with 100 ticks
done.
step my game up to 1000 German beers and 500 Belgian beers.
done.
more US states
done.
Finally get an Ice Cider!
14 and counting
goals for 2018: 8k overall, Schlenkerla Grand Slam, 10 of each style, and hitting 100 countries
1. Get as close to 1000 as possible - min. 850.
You guys are going to laugh at this, but I’m a slow rater. If I do get 500 until New Years, and do get around as many new ticks as this year, passing 850 is absolutely doable. 1000 might depend on point (2). 2. Visit at least two festivals.
Because it’ll help with (1) and is wicked fun. 3. Have at least 1 tick of each beer style + half of the Sake styles. 4. Get up to 50 countries.
This means I’ll also continue my tour of asian pale lagers whenever I find one, as well as actively seek out new country ticks of quality beer.
Finish “other” styles now that I finished all beer styles (only need a Sake-Honjozo and Sake-Taru)
Still need both of these. Didn’t try too hard to get them though.
Get a country tick for Africa
Completed.
Rate all Nebraska Breweries (11 to go currently +3 more slated to open in 2017)
Got mostly complete then a few more opened up under the radar. 9 to go + 4 more opening soon-ish
Get to 2,500 rates (About 660 rates needed)
Still need 94 more. Won’t happen and don’t plan to try. Will likely end up about 60 short.
2018 Goals
Hit 3,000 rates. (Will need approximately 550. Slowed down a bit lately so this is realistic.)
Rate all Nebraska Breweries. Again, with new ones opening and distance so far apart, I currently plan to have to try 13 new ones and some would be difficult due to location and hours but possible.
Hit 500 different breweries. Need 31 more. Very possible if I want to put in some effort.
Hit 50 countries. Need 6 more. A bit trickier and would take some traveling or trading.
Finish styles. Still need Sake-Taru and Sake-Honjozo. Again, possible if I do a trade or travel.
Hit 500 Nebraska rates. Only 33 to go. Super easy. Might have before the end of 2017 haha.
These are the goals + baselines: after “//” half year check. /// almost year check
Taking one white month - January vs beer, cider, mead, sake… (If failure- add 1 day per beer, will happen since I’m going skiing with the 12th of Jan) // Done! ///
10 new countries, currently 151! // 166 and a few planned, thx hard digging RB’s friends. /// At 169 so home safe!
2b. Remain with the top 25, currently at 23. // Place 14! /// Currently no 15.
40 new Swedish breweries, currently 226! // 258 at the moment so will be reached!///283 - almost 60
3b. stay within top 10 raters of Swe brewers. // 4th place for breweries and 4th for beers. /// 3th for both
Drink less crappy beers. Currently at 3,21 // 3,23 - might be hard to adjust vs trying beers that will never recive high average vs few ratings /// 3,24
7,5 k beers. -at 6649 now // Done, 2 days ago ///
8133 / OK
Remain within the top 10 raters in Sweden. And reach 160 overall // at place 8, and at place 169 - (the last one will be hard to reach /// 154;)
Remain within the Stouties Group! Currently at pos 49.// at place 42 and this year
it’s Porterfestival in November. /// 39 currently
Yeah, all goals fulfilled, not all were hard to overcome… 2018 will be back hopefully in an new tread;)
10 of each style. May have to visit Belgium, unless Mikkeller releases 2 more Faros. Also may need to trade some kristall weizens and polotmavys.
Did the trip to Belgium, but still didn’t get to 10 of each style - still missing 4 polotmavys. Didn’t set it out as a goal, but will probably hit 1 of each non beery style this year thanks to @jinroh.
Keep ticking every brewery/cidery in Estonia (excluding the homebrews that have been entered to DB and not deleted)
Ongoing struggle
100 quad ratings. Should be easy to do, only bit more than 10 to go.
Was easy to do, now have ~130 quad ratings.
Tick more countries/counties.
Good progress in this one, RBESG helped a lot.
Tick less, but drink more interesting stuff.
I rated a lot more, so this was complete failure…
Hmm, I must have missed it, thanks! By the way I just had a long lunch at
Circa, after learning about its existence here, yesterday and I liked the
place
Man, just go to two festivals in Europe and you’ll knock all of these out of the park. Most European festivals these days seem to have at least a couple of Swedish breweries present (and the same goes for Spain, for that matter), and Bakunin is often flying the Russian flag at a lot of the bigger festivals. And all you need to do for the first one is find the tables with RB folks kicking around: the Belgian and Dutch RB groups both brought some far-off country ticks to Borefts this past year, which was a nice, unexpected win for the day