Brewing Black IPA at #BGH Brewery in Krakow (10.2021)
The preparation for brewing began with the preparation of a recipe draft by the BGH team.
The activities of the Krakow Brewing School in cooperation with BGH were started by Olga Hrabia: she analyzed the chemical composition of the technological water of Browar Górniczo-Hutniczy in Krakow, and proposed a method of water correction in order to match it to the style.
The next task of KSB was the propagation of yeast. A few days before brewing, Aneta Ciosek started this task.
Kuba Caćma, Main Brewer at BGH Brewery (by the way, it is worth mentioning that this is our graduate from a few years ago) – he chose the well-proven top-fermenting yeast US-05 for fermentation.
On the day of brewing, the entire team of the brewery and KSB actively participated in brewing – Black IPA is a beer brewed for special December occasions, so it’s no wonder that everyone was eagerly involved in its creation.
Kamil Domański, the second BGH Brewery – a graduate of the first edition of the “Certified Brewer” postgraduate studies, was involved, among other things, in controlling the parameters of the wort during the brewing process.
In addition to calculating the correction of the water composition, Olga checked on an ongoing basis whether the most important assumptions in terms of water composition and the course of the process in the brewhouse were achieved:
The pH of the mash and wort after mash filtration must not exceed a pH of 5.8
residual alkalinity of max. 30 mg / L Ca CO3
the balance between sulphates and chlorides is shifted towards sulphates to enhance the hop character of the beer
Katarzyna Fulara, as part of her industrial internship, assisted Kuba as a brewer’s assistant during the brewing of two more brews.
In the BGH Brewery, breaking the brewhouse is about 10 hl of wort. The next two barrels are transferred to one fermentation tank with a volume of approx. 20 hl.
During the transfer of the first batch, which was oxygenated to an oxygen level of over 15 mg / L, we added freshly grown yeast.
In total, we prepared 15 liters of yeast slurry to inoculate the Black IPA BGH beer. Already 24 hours after inoculation, the yeast started to work dynamically and within a few days the assumed degree of beer fermentation was achieved.
The summary of the brewing process was a tasting of the beer prototype, brewed at home by Piotr Drochliński, Production Director of BGH Brewery.
We will have to wait until December for the effects of joint brewing and the comparison of the prototype to the first beer brewed on a technical scale! We will celebrate twice: the mining and metallurgical community will disgust Black IPA during Barbórka, and brewers associated with the Krakow Brewery School during KSB’s fifth birthday.
