During lockdown I started making a load of homebrew — my first attempt was an all-grain American IPA (just a 1-gallon batch to get started), but this time I decided to try a larger extract kit to make proper quantities. I went for the Bulldog Brews American IPA — Evil Dog — and I’m glad I did.
Bulldog Brews are one of the most popular homebrew kit brands in the UK, and the Evil Dog American IPA kit is one of their bestsellers. Extract kits like this are a brilliant middle ground between full all-grain brewing and simple can-of-malt kits — you get liquid or dry malt extract (already converted from grain) alongside speciality grains to steep, fresh hops, and a quality yeast strain. The result is a much more flavourful and complex beer than a basic tin kit, but without the full complexity of an all-grain brew day.
The whole brew was very easy to put together — it took less than 30 minutes of active work, and the kit should yield around 23 litres of finished beer. That’s a lot of IPA for very little effort. After a couple of weeks of fermentation and then conditioning in the bottle, the result should be a proper American-style IPA: citrusy, hoppy, golden, and significantly better than most supermarket beers. Extract brewing is a fantastic way to get into homebrewing without the equipment overhead of all-grain.
Bulldog Brewery’s Evil Dog is a homebrew kit IPA — the kind of extract-based kit designed to make homebrewing accessible without requiring full grain brewing equipment or extensive experience. Kit brewing has a complicated reputation in the homebrewing community: purists sometimes dismiss it as too simple to be interesting, but a well-made kit brewed carefully can produce genuinely excellent beer. Evil Dog is Bulldog’s hop-forward IPA kit, designed for home brewers who want something with serious hop character.
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