Something happened.... at first I thought it something that happened since we moved into the new house a year or so ago.... then I looked into my brewing notes.... it goes back even further. Over the last 2-2.5 years 25-30 batches.... I have made 3 beers 90% of the time. 90-95% base malt, 5-10% crystal malt C-Hops - mainly Columbus, Centennial, and Cascade and Simcoe. US05-1054-001 for yeast. IBUs 50-65 OG1045-55. The only exceptions I had were 3 lagers, and twice I used English hops instead of c hops.
I used to change it up, make different styles of beers.... I have no desire to anymore. No offense to Ken... but look at his recipe page. There are a ton of similarities in his recipes and my brewing journal looks much the same for some time now.
I have this going for me. CONSISTENCY. My beers come out how I envision. The beers have few flaws - esters, phenols, astringency.
I have "experimented" if you want to call it buy adding 1-2% Black Malt or Midnight Wheat to make an AMBER, but they typically end up brown. I also have found my pallet doesn't discriminate crystal malts between 40-80L at 5-7.5% usage. Honestly I don't see much in color difference at 10% of the grist. I'm going to attribute to I believe that the lovibond rating of crystal is an average and you can/will have variance. However, I can tell the difference between American and British Crystal malts.
I do have my next two brews planned. A Samuel Adams-esque Lager and a 100 IBU / 1.070 OG IPA, So I guess I'm stepping out of my comfort zone... well not really. I've been making a lager one out of ever 4 batches lately so it's fitting into the norm. And the IPA.. well it's US05, C Hops and some crystal 60.
I don't know if I've gotten boring with my brewing or I have began brewing what I want to drink. The one thing that looks to stand out is that this all started about the same time I started brewing 10-13gal batches. So maybe the idea of 12 gallons of a Trippel just isn't very appealing to me.
Just a few observation of my brewing.