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.
The Bulldog Evil Dog homebrew IPA kit is one of the most popular from Bulldog Brews in the UK, and 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.