All-grain number 5: Brew Dog Punk IPA

Punk IPA attempt number 1

So I finally secured a free day to try the Brew Dog Punk IPA recipe I downloaded from the Brew Dog site: https://www.brewdog.com/diydog. I decided on the 2007 version instead of their current recipe as it uses fewer hops and only one type of malt plus doesn't require dry-hopping (trying to cut down on the number of variables at the moment after my previous disasterous AG attempts).

To avoid the chemically tasting brews that have resulted from my previous AG brew days I only sanitised with Brew Safe (a no rinse sanitiser) and avoided using VWP this time.

I've also heavily insulated my mash tun to help retain a steady temperature. I think I may have gone a little overboard as now it requires a little effort to move the handle over the lid.

So here's how the day went...

The mash:



Heated liquor (32L of ASDA Eden Falls Mineral Water) to 77°C-80°C the added 5L + 2kg of grains at a time to mash tun.

I had to add some bottled water (around 1L) to lower the mash temp. The target mash temp is 65°C. For the first 20 mins it was 66°C so I kept the lid off. I then decided it wasn't dropping so I restarted the thermometer and it said 64°C. I closed the lid and after a few more minutes it dropped to 63°C. I added some more liquor and it remained at 65°C for the rest of the mash.

As I went out into the garden I found the manifold for the mash tun lying where I'd left it after rinsing it. As you can imagine, this was disappointing . After a good panic I put on some rubber gloves and fitted the manifold into place and unblocked the pipe through the tap with a metal skewer and everything was fine again. I'm just hoping my brew won't taste like rubber gloves....

I recirculated the wort in the mash tun (probably about 3L), however it never really ran that clear so not sure why or whether this is going to cause any problems?

Another issue I had during the mash is my digital thermometer packed up. It now reads anywhere between 80°C - 100°C no matter what the temperature of the probe is. I'll be sending that one back to Amazon!

The boil:



The burco boiler seems to take an age to start boiling the wort so I keep it covered until it starts to boil. I've also tried adding some insulation this time which seem to help slightly. Hop additions were all fine and I also added a protofloc tablet 15 mins before the end. The SG was 1.054, which just short of the target of 1.056.

Chilling:





The chiller seemed to work fine although I didn't have a thermometer (except a digital infrared one which only measures the surface temp) so relied on guesswork as to when it had cooled sufficiently.

Fermenter:
Once it was in the fermenter I could see that the boil had reduced the wort too much as I only had 18L from the original 25L instead of 20L.



There's not much to say after this as I just added the yeast and set the temperature to maintain 19°C.



Fingers crossed this one will go ok although the recipe doesn't state how much priming sugar to add when it's time to bottle. Greg Hughes' table in the book "Home Brew Beer" recommends 4.5g of cane sugar per litre for IPAs so I guess I'll go with that.

Good job. Now I want to brew again!!!

YOu could add water back to get back to 20l but this will lower your OG... or just leave it.. should be good though!!

JapanBrew said:

Good job. Now I want to brew again!!!

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Cheers!

Covrich said:

YOu could add water back to get back to 20l but this will lower your OG... or just leave it.. should be good though!!

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I arrived at the same conclusion when I saw the volume wasn't quite there - thought I'd keep the OG as it is!

this is my next brew but with extract :shock:

just need to order the crystal in :thumb:

Nice work, great post, love the photos. Good decision not to water it down a bit, I would have made the same choice :thumb:

baggybill said:

Nice work, great post, love the photos. Good decision not to water it down a bit, I would have made the same choice :thumb:

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Thanks it feels good to get positive feedback :mrgreen:. I must admit I was a little nervous about posting amongst more experienced home brewers!

nice write up and pics :thumb:I have 4 thermometers and none of em read the same, I just take an average.

Great work, thanks for sheering.:thumb:
I did this recipe on Monday but sized down to 10L.
My OG was quite low 1.048 but this i think was the poor efficiency of the mash, as my first try at AG brew.
The fermentation is going well, hopefully turns good. I wonder what yeast did you use ?
I went for S05 as not too familiar with liquid yeasts yet

Hi that's great I'd be very interested in hearing how it turns out. I used the Wyeast 1056. It was very easy to use- you locate the inner packet and give it a smack to burst it, give it a shake and wait 3 hours. Obviously this should be one of the first things you do on your brew day!

daft question but did you use extra pale marris otter malt or something else? as just getting the ingredients to make this myself :)

Wow! Nice brewing cave you got there!
Looking forward to an update with your results. I LOVE that beer and was thinking (just like you) to brew the 2007 version first.
Cheers n' beers!:thumb:

Crawfordid said:

daft question but did you use extra pale marris otter malt or something else? as just getting the ingredients to make this myself :)

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Hi that's not a daft question as I was a little confused by this too because I couldn't find anywhere that stocked "extra pale" malt. I eventually discovered that Low Colour Maris Otter is the same stuff (see here), so that is what I used. Good luck with your brew!

So the SG is now down to 1.009 - ready to bottle! Here is what it looks like:



I did have a little taste from the hydrometer jar though and it wasn't that great to be honest. The upfront taste was ok but the aftertaste was REALLY bitter . I assumed that sampling it at this stage is a meant to be a good indicator of how the finished brew will taste? I'll bottle it tonight anyway and hope something magical will happen over the next few weeks to transform it into something palatable!

garymscott said:

So the SG is now down to 1.009 - ready to bottle! Here is what it looks like:



I did have a little taste from the hydrometer jar though and it wasn't that great to be honest. The upfront taste was ok but the aftertaste was REALLY bitter

. I assumed that sampling it at this stage is a meant to be a good indicator of how the finished brew will taste? I'll bottle it tonight anyway and hope something magical will happen over the next few weeks to transform it into something palatable!

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The upfront hop flavours will still be rather raw, conditioning time in the bottle will blend and mellow all of those flavours.

I've bottled mine today as well, i think the small batch cause some issues like very low FG, 1.003, but that might be well due to the lower mash temp

Then end up with loads of trub in the FV, so only manage take out 8L from the 10L batch

Thanks for the advice! Ive just done my just finished brewing it and its currently bubbling away and smells awesome! My first all grain brew so hope it turns out okay! My wort didnt clear very much when I was vorlauf ing it either but hopefully it dosent matter too much... Managed to get a S.G of 1.062 after boil and about 18 litres, I almost left it as it was but wanted to be able to make it consistently so diluted it down to 1.056 to just under 20 litres using a calculator thing. So fingers crossed!

You planning on just bottling it straight after its stopped fermenting or doing a secondary ferment first then bottle? I still cant decide whether it makes much difference to do a secondary ferment or not especially if your not adding anything extra in it.

Crawfordid said:

Thanks for the advice! Ive just done my just finished brewing it and its currently bubbling away and smells awesome! My first all grain brew so hope it turns out okay! My wort didnt clear very much when I was vorlauf ing it either but hopefully it dosent matter too much... Managed to get a S.G of 1.062 after boil and about 18 litres, I almost left it as it was but wanted to be able to make it consistently so diluted it down to 1.056 to just under 20 litres using a calculator thing. So fingers crossed!

You planning on just bottling it straight after its stopped fermenting or doing a secondary ferment first then bottle? I still cant decide whether it makes much difference to do a secondary ferment or not especially if your not adding anything extra in it.

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Don't worry too much about clarity before its fermented. Mine look murky as buggery, but still end up crystal clear.

Racking to a secondary DOES make a difference to clarity, but I don;t bother with it. I leave it in primary for 2 weeks; 1 to ferment and another for the yeast to clear itself up. Then I rack to a bottling bucket and bottle from there.

Stick a hop sock over your siphon stick and it'll minimise the crap you draw up the tube.

Notlaw said:

Don't worry too much about clarity before its fermented. Mine look murky as buggery, but still end up crystal clear.

Racking to a secondary DOES make a difference to clarity, but I don;t bother with it. I leave it in primary for 2 weeks; 1 to ferment and another for the yeast to clear itself up. Then I rack to a bottling bucket and bottle from there.

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+1

or 3 weeks in fv if doing a strong brew

I recently had a go at the newer Punk recipe with the dry hopping. Three or four weeks in bottle and it is still very hazy, not sure that I'm expecting it to clear properly. Couldn't care less, tastes great; really zings out of the glass.