If you drink beer and like craft beer, I would be surprised if you have not tried one or more BrewDog beers at some point. Although not without some controversy, BrewDog is certainly a Scottish success story and they are not afraid to try something different. Their marketing campaigns often raise an eyebrow or two.
Moreover, the company is now more than 25% owned by its employees and shareholders, or Equity punk community, as they like to call them. Their bars also share 50% of their profits with their workers. I recently had the opportunity of visiting one of their bars in Cleveland, Ohio.
It is clear that they like to see themselves as different and in 2016 BrewDog decided to share all their recipes online. To say this is unusual is perhaps an understatement. BrewDog’s recipes are their intellectual property (IP) and companies do not generally give away their secrets freely. I am sure you will be aware of an orange coloured Scottish soft drink, made from girders apparently, the recipe of which is a closely guarded secret. Thus, when it comes to recipes, a company would generally not want others to know what it is, although people may try to copy it.
However, the idea of providing others with knowledge of your IP is not entirely unique. For example, open-source software is computer software that is released under a license that the copyright holder grants someone the right to use, change, and distribute the software and its original source code to others. One benefit of this, is that it leads to further development of the software and also allows others to iron out any flaws etc. Nevertheless, I doubt BrewDog are necessarily hoping that others can improve on their recipes, but I guess you can always write to them if you think you have.
If you go to BrewDog’s website you will find a section called “DIY DOG”, which is dedicated to sharing their recipes.
Quite why they decided to share all of their recipes I am not sure, although their website says “sharing is caring…”. Perhaps we can invite them to contribute to a future edition of Scran & sIPs™, so they can explain some of the background and why they feel it is important to share their recipes. All I can say is, I am glad they did.
I love BrewDog beers and Punk IPA is one of my all-time favourite beers. I am an all-grain home brewer, so at some point it was inevitable that I would want to try and make my own BrewDog copy (or clone as it is termed in the home-brew field). So recently I purchased the grain, hops (which even BrewDog describes as being an insane amount) and yeast, and set about making my own batch of Punk IPA. Of course, as anyone will know, following a recipe does not always ensure that you get exactly the same result at the end of the day and my home brew set up is at a slightly different scale to what BrewDog employ
Nevertheless, I was very pleased with the outcome. I am sorry that you cannot taste it here, but I can assure you it is very tasty. I have not done a side-by-side comparison with actual Punk IPA, perhaps I will, but does it really matter? I am pleased with the outcome, it is Punk IPA-like and surely that is all that matters. I still have a few bottles left. Will they last until Christmas, probably not.
