As 2017 draws to a close it is time once again for my most favourite/dreaded time of the year. The Polkie Awards started in 2015 and are meant to celebrate the great beers I experienced in the previous 12 months. The first year saw me name 1 favourite beer a day for 10 days, while last year was a plethora of posts separated by style with a culmination on New Year's Eve of My 10 most memorable beers from 2016. As with everything I do, I am always looking for a way to change it up and keep it interesting for myself and by extension, hopefully you.
This year I have decided to keep the categories but slimming down from the barrage of last year with a little combining and trimming. Using my ratings on Instagram and how I wrote about each beer combined with my (often hazy) memory of the experience of said brews I have compiled various Top 10's in the following posts, with their publishing dates :
Dec 27th : The Best of the Rest (A Grab Bag of styles)
Dec 28th : Sour, Farmhouse Ales/Saisons and Belgian Styles
Dec 29th : Porters, Stouts, Imperial and Barrel Aged Stouts
Dec 29th: My Least Favourite Beer of 2017
Dec 30th : Pale Ales, IPAs and DIPAs
Dec 31st : The Ten
I've left a few styles that got their own posts last year to the opening Grab Bag post simply because I either didn't try enough of the style to warrant an entire column or I didn't find a lot standout versions to be able to write about. It was a very interesting year that was heavily dominated by Milkshake and North East IPAs (both of which may need their own category next year) with barrel aged stouts and porters coming hard and sours and Farmhouse Ales growing in my estimation.
Over 1000 reviews gave me pause to consider what I had tasted, experienced and wrote in 2017. I looked back and hope to see a year filled with growth, experiences and new friends and found myself getting nostalgic for some of the great times and beer from the last 365.
I hope you've had a great year of beer and look forward to a 2018 that is even better. Things are looking up for Craft beer despite some naysayers out there and I have little doubt that we will be back here next year talking about all the great things we did and drank.
It's going to be a busy week and I am sure some folks will take umbrage with my picks but such is the life of a fat guy who drinks beer and tells people about it. Every post was put together to reflect how I felt about that particular style and the beers I found included in it. My favourites may not be yours but at least we can agree that there has never been a better time to be a beer drinker and that is the best news of all.
Let The 2017 Polkies begin!
Raise your glass and your standards,
One Beer at a time!
Cheers!
Polk
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