2007 Beer Tally

Yes, I'm compulsive enough to have kept a spreadsheet of the beers I tried last year. I tried 205 new-to-me beers in 2007. That number doesn't include numerous brewery samples and FABTS meeting tastings. Unless I have what I consider a full serving of a beer it doesn't get counted. My records actually go back to 2006 but don't include the first half or so of 2006. Although I've been enjoying craft beer for a number of years, it was in mid-2006 that the interest morphed into a passion.

I tried new beers covering 61 different styles in 2007. The style classifications are taken from the entries on beeradvocate.com. The leader was American Pale Ale with 17 different beers on the list. I tried 16 American IPA's, along with 11 each of the Märzen / Oktoberfest and Double IPA styles.

The list includes beers from 90 different breweries. The Matt Brewing Company, the makers of Saranac beers, provided the most new beers for me last year with 10 on the list. This number is influenced by the six beers in the Saranac Twelve Beers of Winter I reviewed for Session #10 - Winter Seasonal Beers. Nine beers from Boston Brewing made the list. There were also 7 from Sierra Nevada, along with 6 each from Great Divide, Victory, Brooklyn, and Boulder Beer.

Twelve countries are represented. The leader obviously is the United States with 168 entries. There are 10 beers from Germany on the list and 8 from England. Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Scotland and Turkey all added beers for me to try as well.

190 of the new beers I tried in 2007 were served from bottles and the other 15 were had on draft. All of the growler fills I picked up in 2007 were beers I'd had previously.

These numbers are not large compared to many folks in the craft beer world. However, I did enjoy keeping the tally and seeing a picture of my craft beer adventure last year. I look forward to seeing what 2008 will bring.