Brewers Notebook 01: Punk IPA Brew Day

1-Gallon Brewing Kit, Ingredients, Instructions and Brew Day Notes

This article contains the original instructions and my personal ‘brewers notes’ regarding each brewing process step. If you’re planning to buy the Brookly Brewshop kit, it’s a terrific kit, but as a novice, some improvements would aid the clarity of the instructions! I’ve noted these in the brewers’ notes section within each stage below.

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Suppliers Information (Brooklyn Brewshop)

On the box:

In collaboration with BrewDog, the revolutionary Scotland brewery, we’ve scaled down their celebrated Punk IPA so you can brew it in your home kitchen. Stomping into the room at 5.6% ABV, this golden classic is packed with new world hops, bursts of caramel, tropical fruit notes and a spiky, bitter finish.

Punk IPA Beer Making Kit (Ingredients and Equipment Included)

Ingredients

• “Beer Mix” (malt unspecified)
• Yeast (strain unspecified)
• Chinook Hops
• Simcoe Hops
• Ahtanum Hops

Brewers Notes:

There are two ingredients not included in the kit.

1. Tap Water (I would now suggest the use of bottled water is preferred unless you know your water quality is good. Eventually, this will lead to looking at water chemistry in more detail)
2. 3 Tablespoons of Honey (for carbonation in the bottling stage)

Equipment

Equipment Provided in the Kit:

• Glass Demijohn (US 1-Gallon)
• Racking Cane and Tube (for siphoning)
• Clip to restrict flow (during siphoning)
• Glass Thermometer
• 3-Piece Airlock and Drilled Bung
• Sanitiser Tablets

Brewers Notes — Additional Equipment Required:

The equipment provided is of good quality and sufficient to see you through multiple brew days. The demijohn also looks great, you feel like you’re really a brewer! There are a few ‘kitchen’ items that you’ll need, the first two of which were not in my kitchen so it’s worth a check, these are:

• 6–7L Saucepan (practically speaking 2 6L saucepans would be ideal)
• Large Sieve (sufficient to fit across a 6–7L saucepan and hold over 1kg of grain)
• Funnel

Punk IPA Brew Day Stages

A typical brew day will take around 4 hours so make sure you have plenty of time available before you begin. The main stages described below are typical of most brews, but timings can vary significantly depending on the ingredients and recipe used.

Brew Day Stages take around 4 hours to complete

Preparation (30 minutes)

Instructions:

1. Dissolve half of the sanitiser packet provided with a gallon of water in a container and soak everything that is going to be used.

Brewers Notes:

Water — I did not consider the various minerals and chlorine in tap water that can negatively influence the taste of the final brew. I now use bottled water, but I did not realise the potential impact it could have during this first brew day.

Sanitiser — The sanitiser provided was not a ‘no rinse’ variety, something I learned about later and made this stage easier. The difference is relatively small — the need to rinse all your equipment after sanitisation — so I’m not wishing to overstate this point.

The Mash (60 minutes)

During The Mash you are steeping grain in hot water, it’s rather like regularly stirring a very large cup of tea. The reason for doing this is to extract all the sugars, colour and flavour from the grain.

Instructions:

1. Heat 2.4 litres of water to 71°C
2. Add grain (“mashing in.”)
3. Mix gently with a spoon until the mash has the consistency of oatmeal
4. Add water if too dry or hot. The temperature will drop to ~66°C
5. Cook for 60 minutes at 63–68°C, stir every 10 minutes and use the thermometer to take temperature readings from multiple locations
6. After 60 minutes, heat to 77°C while stirring constantly (“Mashing Out”)

Brewers Notes:

Temperature Control — The glass thermometer included responded slowly to temperature changes. It was also made of glass and didn’t survive the second brew day due to my heavy-handedness. However, I did subsequently learn that digital thermometers respond more rapidly to temperature changes, making it easier to maintain the required temperature control required during the mash.

Strike Temperature — The initial temperature (71°C) is slightly higher than the temperature of the mash. It is set higher with the knowledge that adding the grains will reduce the temperature to around 66°C. This initial temperature is called the strike temperature.

The Sparge (30 minutes)

During The Sparge, you put the grain in a strainer and pour hot water over it to rinse off any sugars remaining from the mash.

Instructions:

1. Heat additional 4.25 litres of water to 77°C. Start 20 minutes before the end of the Mash
2. Set up a “lauter tun” (a strainer over a pot).
3. Carefully add the hot grain mash to the strainer, collecting the liquid that passes through. (Called ‘wort’)
4. Slowly and evenly pour 77°C water over the mash to extract the grain’s sugars.
5. Collect 4.75 litres of wort. You will lose about 20% to evaporation later on, so you want to start with a bit more than you’ll end with.
6. Re-circulate wort through grain once.

Brewers Notes:

There is some strange terminology for a first-timer at this stage, but you don’t need to know the detail and — with hindsight — I’m glad that a gentle introduction to these terms was provided.

Recirculate wort — I missed this step entirely on the day! I’m certain it didn’t have a terrible effect, but it is a useful way to give the grains an extra rinse to get all those sugars out and the second round of filtering helps to clear up any stray grains still in the wort. I don’t know the impact of missing this step because there was no measurement of the sugars, which would require a hydrometer.

The Boil (60 minutes)

The Boil is probably the easiest step, bringing the wort to a low, rolling boil and keeping it there while adding hops or spices at set intervals.

Bittering hops are added towards the beginning and more delicate and aromatic ingredients toward the end.

Instructions:

1. Heat wort until it boils.
2. Keep boiling until you’ve hit the “hot break” (Wort will foam — you may need to reduce heat slightly so it doesn’t boil over.)
3. Stir occasionally. All you want is a light boil — too hot and you lose fermentable sugars and volume.
4. The boil will last 60 minutes. Start a timer and add in the rest of the ingredients at these times:
5. Add 5 pellets of Ahtanum Hops at start of boil
6. Add 2/3 Chinook Hops and 3/5 remaining Ahtanum Hops 45 minutes into the boil
7. At 60 minutes, turn off heat — Add remaining hops, including all your Simcoe Hops.

20% of the wort will have evaporated in this step leaving you with 1 gallon (3.8 litres) of wort. If your boil was a bit high, the surface area of your pot extra large, or you brewed on a really hot day, you may have less than the full amount.

Brewers Notes:

The Boil is probably the easiest stage for temperate control, it’s straightforward to get the boil rolling and then set timers for the hop additions.

Fining Agents — these aid beer clarity and none were included within this recipe. The result was also very clear regardless, so it’s not an omission that caused any issues.

20% Evaporation — I have subsequently measured pre-boil and post-boil and was shocked that it was exactly 20% loss in this stage. I now have data that validates this statement. There are other losses too: evaporation during the mash, liquid absorbed into the grains, liquid absorbed into the hop additions, and cooling all reduce the end volume further. If the amount of water seems high, it quickly reduces through each of the steps. I regularly fall a little short on the water volume, it’s tricky.

Cooling (45 minutes)

Ideally cooling should happen quickly to prevent any unwanted bacteria from entering the wort.

Instructions:

1. Place brew pot in an ice bath until it cools to 21°C

Brewers Notes:

Cooling takes far longer than expected. I did not have an ‘ice bath’ to use so the heat from the saucepan heated the cold water very quickly. The best approach to cooling was running cold water into the sink, allowing warmer water to exit through the overflow or plug. Also, creating a whirlpool effect within the cooling wort will also speed up the process.

Transfer (15 minutes)

Move the wort into the 1-Gallon demijohn.

Instructions:

1. Place a strainer over the funnel and pour your beer into the glass fermenter. Yeast needs oxygen. The strainer helps aerate your wort and clarify your beer (as well as catch any sediment from going into the fermenter).
2. Add tap water to bring wort up to 1 Gallon mark if the level is low.
3. “Pitch” yeast. (Toss the whole packet in.)
4. Shake aggressively. This wakes up the yeast and gets more air into the wort.
5. Attach sanitised screw-top stopper to bottle. Slide rubber tubing no more than 1” (2.5 cm) into the stopper and place the other end in a small bowl of sanitiser solution. This is called a “blow-off tube,” allowing CO2 to escape.

Brewers Notes:

Step 1 is crazy — Whoever wrote these instructions did not consider that building up a tower of (1) demijohn; (2) funnel; (3) strainer; (4) pouring liquid is not feasible unless you have the exactly correct implements to do it. Even then it’s tricky! It does no harm to break this into two simple steps

1. Strain the cooled wort into another saucepan
2. Use the funnel to pour the strained/cooled wort into the fermenter.

A Muslin/Nylon filter bag — There is a further improvement on this, which requires a nylon or muslin strainer bag, but my method now is to place a strainer bag into the saucepan and then pour the cooled wort. Lifting out the bag leaves just the wort behind. Shaking the fermenter in step 4 will aerate the wort sufficiently so nothing is lost by this method.

Step 3 “Pitch the yeast” — Just a quick note on terminology, given the small gap at the top of the demijohn, in reality, this is a careful and gentle pour of the yeast into the fermenter. It’s not like you’re pitching a ball from the other side of the kitchen.

My First Brew (follow the link to the playlist)

Follow along as I experience my first brew day, the brewing lifecycle and finally, the taste test.

My First Brew is broken into 6 small ‘episodes’

My Brewers Notebook for Punk IPA will continue with the brewing lifecycle.

Cheers Everyone
Rob