OK, let’s have your hopes and plans, by all means bring in last years if you wish, but mostly this thread is about the new year!
Stay healthy and travel.
Plans afoot for Lisbon, Madeira and Porto multi trip plus a German road trip down to Saarland via Luxembourg. British visits also in the pipeline.
Beer Goals.
Currently sat on 15,019 rates and 95th on the rating leaderboard, I would like to stay in the top 100 during 2024.
Stay the top rater in Shropshire, 569 at the moment, 44 rates to the good.
164 Countries and 359 Regions at the moment, I would like to push those totals along a bit, Regions will be difficult, countries very difficult; no plans on how to do this yet, although my last two French Regions are on their way to me. South American countries and Mexico being my Regional ‘black hole’ (plus Russia and Switzerland).
Keep reviewing places, still need 6 English counties to complete the 46, Germany the only country fully ‘done’. Improve on 24 countries and 96 regions visited; again no plans apart from English county visits.
Tick off the remaining Hampshire breweries. Going to start off with a trip down to Lymington [Edit: the Mrs has just mentioned a short break during Easter so Lymington has been mooted.]
• Brew Forest, Brockenhurst, Monkey - Lymington/Brockenhurst.
• Ewe Brew - Andover
• Brewhouse and Kitchen Portsmouth
• Portchester - Portcullis
• Alton - Ten Tun Brewhouse
Ditto for Berkshire… Just the one though I am not sure how often Swamp Bog beers are actually available.
Tick off more of the remaining 4 Dorset breweries (Parachute in Sherbourne, and Brewhouse and Kitchen Bournemouth most likely). Dig Brew and Bredy Farm more obscure.
4…Tick off more London breweries. Waiting for a few to start brewing properly (Common Rioters, Blondies, Libertalia, Babel Brewhouse). Should go to Kill the Cat tomorrow.
Do more stuff in Toronto - I have been a homebody lately. Partly due to COVID, partly just a lot of inertia. We managed to get out of town a bit but have rarely gone out in our own city!
More beer and board games nights with friends.
Beer Wise:
Crack 15,000 ratings and 9000 Canada ratings. (Both pretty achievable!)
Move up to #2 on the Top Raters of New Brunswick Beers (Currently #4). This should be pretty doable if I do the trip I have planned, and assuming Spab doesn’t also add a bunch more at the same time! Fingers crossed.
Drink down the cellar so there is nothing aging that is not supposed to be aging! I currently have a backlog as we keep buying faster than we are drinking. (The fact that we keep getting sick right after trips where we stock up doesn’t help!)
My only real beer aim is to hit 500 Welsh ticks on the yellow app. I’m up to 465 so should achieve that in the next couple of months.
Other than that I’m going to try and aim for more quality over quantity, seek out beers from a few newish breweries I want to try (Sobremesa, Dolphin).
Travel-wise I’m hoping to get to Ireland this year for the first time in a while and more specifically the south, which I’ve never been to (most trips have been Dublin-centric). That should give me a lot of new breweries to try. May also get to Azerbaijan which would hopefully result in a couple of new country hits.
More beer travling. 3 new EU countries are already in plans, but should do at least 6-7 total. Visit at least 1 new big beer festival (probably Budapest, which would be also a new country). Vilnius winter beer festival is already planned (also a new country!). Thinking about Brewskival, if BXL doesn’t happen.
No other plans, hopefully will meet some more rb-rians…
Ratings & Breweries should jump once I sort out my backlog (been saying that for 2 years) so targets are doable, 8 new countries should not be too challenging, styles is always an issue for me, those last few are weird ones I seldom see.
2024 is the year I get better at place ratings. Honest guv. Would be good to try and tick off the majority of England regions, we shall see.
All the best to everyone with your hopes and aspirations (not just beer related).
My aims are fairly modest, I am not too fussed about overall numbers, it’d be nice to remain in the top 100 raters, and hopefully that shouldn’t be an issue for sometime yet.
It would be nice to hold onto 1st place in Derbyshire, this has become much harder since Brexit but I still am occasionally able to pick up the bigger boys such as Thornbridge and Buxton.
Visit the UK, not been back since Oct 2022 and if so visit a few familiar places and hopefully some newer ones.
Keep pushing up the top twenty list in Bayern.
Try and visit all of the breweries in Bayerisch Wald (the area where I am now living) doing pretty well currently.
Start to hit some of the breweries in Czechia, particularly any near the border area and within a couple of hours now we are on the doorstep.
Add more worthy places in Bayerisch Wald and also the areas of Austria and Czechia near me, because as with many places away from larger well connected cities, they tend to be trickier to visit with issues such as poor public transport connections, these have a tendency to become somewhat neglected areas.
Hopefully get to visit Croatia in the summer a new country for me for places.
Continue to get out and about in Frank (camper) and pick up new (to me) breweries.
Continue to make as much use of the Deutschland ticket as possible (€49 a month travel ticket for unlimited public transport with the exception of ICE and one or two other long distance train/bus options)
5800 ticks. At around 5050 currently
1050 places, currently 977
Clamber onto more English County top 50 lists, at 14 currently
300 cider, perry, mead ticks. Currently at 189.
Bit of travel to new places, booked for Tallinn Beer week in June, first trip to Estonia.
I stopped doing goals for beery stuff a few years ago, I went back to buying beers from breweries or in styles I know I’m likely to enjoy and not caring about specific stats. That said, I do still love to look at my stats and will occasionally look for specific things to get styles, regions or countries to a nice round number.
In 2023 I got:
Norway to 200
Ireland to 100
Barley Wine to 50
Flavored Berliner Weisse to 99 (I have a couple in the fridge, if I’d have realised I would’ve had one more to make it 100)
Looking at my current stats, in 2024 I’ll just go for some easy milestones:
Sweden to 200 (only need 8 more and already 5 to rate so this will be done very quickly)
Stout - Imperial to 200 (15 more needed, if brewers stop adding shit to make it pastry/flavored this would be great, thanks)
Pilsner, Golden Ale, and IPA - Sour all to 100 (7 more needed of each)
Drink more barley wines
Drink more mead
Drink more sake
IPA - Hazy to 1000
IPA - Red to 50 - currently on 30, depending on trends this could be a tall order.
And some missing stuff:
styles - find a Dark Saison and a Kvass
UK regions: Rutland, Dyfed, Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Shetland
Any other new country/region ticks will be a bonus but no specific goals for these.
I won’t lie, I do rather enjoy pastry stouts (usually, depending on adjuncts). I just hate that it seems to be the default setting for so many breweries these days. It’s more difficult to find a plain old impy stout these days, especially ones that are new ticks.
What are you hoping to find? Last time I was there (Baku, albeit in late 2018) there wasn’t much really — a number of local beers, a couple from Turkey, and two or three N/As from Iran.
Overall goal is to drink less, something I failed to do last year. I suppose the only way to really achieve this is to not drink at home, but that seems like a tall order.
Visit yet another ex-Soviet country… I’m running out of these, only three left out of 15. Next up is Uzbekistan Thankfully @Travlr was there in 2022 and laid down some tips here.
Visit a new region, preferably one that I haven’t had beer from.
Attempt to find a single new country tick and 10 new region ticks. So far I’ve found a place with a potential six Japanese regions (beer, not sake), but they cost 6x more than your average craft beer. So perhaps I will pass on that.
A new country tick seems optimistic, bar travelling to a new country, but then again, beers from South Ossetia popped up here last month (OK, it isn’t really a country, but RateBeer insists).
Maybe get Helles / Dortmunder Export, Amber Lager - International / Vienna, and Zwickelbier / Kellerbier / Landbier to 100 and round off some countries.
Modest goals again this year… although I ended up ramping things up a bit at the end of 2023, I’ll try not to get too caught up in the 2024 numbers this year!
Starting with dry January again, I have a 24 rates from Dry Drinker in the garage, will make a start on them soon.
Also, no foreign travel planned this year, so I have some UK-based goals instead.
Try as many of my currently unrated Scottish breweries as possible. (41 out of 179, according to the active breweries list, but not sure that’s 100% accurate)
Attend more Scottish beer festival (should help with 1)
Stay top of Northumberland (currently 79 ahead of 2nd place, and due back in Amble in May)
Pick up that Ice Perry I thought about last year, ticking off one more style. I have 2 sake styles missing, but they are very rare, and I’m not that fussed about sake tbh.
Spend more time in good pubs.
In general, focus on beers made of water, grains, hops and yeast, and nothing else! I’m fed up of beers that taste like sweets, just because they’ve had a load of flavourings added to them.
And if I drink half as many new beers as last year, I should be just shy of 19,000 rates, so I might as well aim to hit that by the year end. [Edit - my maths was way off here! I should hit 19k around April, even averaging one rate a day]
I think beer and place rating wise I’m going to be happy with treading water. It’s getting harder and harder to rate 100+ places per year! I will try for 1275 places and 7500 beers by the end of the year. Got up to 1306 places and 7517 beers, so made this
Visit and rate places at least one new UK county (I’m missing 6), or at least beef up one of my weaker counties with 5 or less. Yes, Herefordshire. But no beefing up of other less rated counties. I did get one place in Mid Glamorgan though…
Continue to chase slightly less common styles I like: bocks, brown ales, Scotch ales, Baltic porters. Get those numbers up and divert myself away from pales, sours, impy stouts and bitters. Not really, although I feel that many breweries are starting to branch out again.
Try beer from at least 3 new countries, taking me to 80. It’s getting harder! Nope. On 79.
Seek out good beer from the US and the Continent. It’s getting harder and harder to find anything affordable. Not really, but an unexpected trip to Florida saw my stats rise for the USA a little bit.
At the same time, drink more local beer. Sometimes my rate-chasing means I ignore local breweries more than I should, and the two we lost in Leicester this year (West End and Framework) really hit home. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. I’m not the biggest homer but I’m the top rater of local-ish outfits like Round Corner, Leatherbritches, Charnwood and Mill Hill. Still room for improvement though.
I’d love to add an overseas trip to my goals but this isn’t likely. I did (the US) but it was for personal reasons so not quite the madness I would usually have indulged in.
So… 2024 goals.
Not really a goal per se but I do love rating beer, and I want to continue rating beer. On RateBeer. Hopefully.
Get some rates in another new English county, most likely going to be Durham as it’s the easiest of my 5 unrated.
1a. Get to 200 Grtr London place rates & 100 Leics (I’m on 99 so should be easy)
2 new countries. Just 2. That’s not hard is it?
I’ve been fairly festival-free since the plague, only having been to Rutland (twice), in 2022 and 2023. So it’d be nice to try a bigger one again. Peterborough or Nottingham maybe. I still miss Cambridge.
Partake in the camaraderie that RateBeer and craft beer in general has to offer. I went on trips to Sheffield (March) and Nottingham (July) which were enjoyable, and went on a trip of the St Pete Beach breweries with my old fraternity brothers - many of whom I hadn’t seen in almost 30 years - in March.
Drink maybe a little bit less beer and a little bit more whisk(e)y. Got back into the water of life this autumn and would like to diversify a bit…
Thankfully 
