BOOTCAMP 004

The bootcamp is not a home brewing class but it’s a brewing crash course for craft beer lovers; who will develop a better sense of the craft, home brewers who are looking forward to widen technical know-how horizon and anyone who is an aspiring brewer. This is an unique bootcamp where not only knowledge is shared but it’s a well implemented thought to promote both craft beer and brewing culture among the like minded folks. And, it’s a one of a kind of workshop across the nation and one of the best possible ways a microbrewery can amass a fan base.

What qualifies for craft beer?

For the uninitiated difference between a craft beer (small batch size) and mass-produced bottled beer is similar to the difference between a gourmet burger and a fast food chain burger; in short, the difference is in the quality of ingredients used. In a Gourmet burger, ingredients quality would not be compromised just like a craft beer where quality ingredients is of upmost importance and the final product will speak volumes about it.But there is a line of caution – not all craft beers are good and neither all bottled mass produced bottled beers are undrinkable ; when using natural ingredients to flavour the beer the extracted flavours would be subtle but sometimes brewers cross the line and add artificial flavouring (e.g.- Mango extracts) and color (e.g- Green color of apple beer) to a beer which reflects poorly in the final product. To add any artificial flavour extracts and colors is a big no in Craft beer culture.

The two-day brewing bootcamp was held at Independence brewing company in Pune on 11^th and 12^th of May 2019. This was the 4^th year of the Bootcamp which saw a full strength of 25 attendees with background as varied as IT , fresh graduates , food technologist, lawyer, blogger, microbrewery founder coming from- Pune, Bangalore, Goa , Mumbai & Delhi.

“Bootcamp 004 was an amazing experience. Two days filled with learning a lot about beer – facts, figures and brewing science. I enjoyed the brilliant in house brews at Independence Brewing Co, and shared a special time out there with the rest of the participants and with the Independence team.” said Elroy who works as software developer in Bangalore.

Shailendra Bist, head brewer was spearheading the program along with his team; the core brewing team has seven members. Shailendra aka Shailly , a mechanical engineer , co-founded Independence Brewing Co after moving back (2012) to India from USA ; in the year 2004 he took home brewing as a hobby in California and there was no turning back since then.He is also a member of BJCP ( Beer Judge Certification program). Independence Brewing Co was established in 2014 at Mundhwa in Pune followed by opening of a tap room in Balewadi (Pune) & Mumbai (Andheri west).

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“Our intent with bootcamp was simple; get craft beer enthusiast together and have fun learning together about how its actually made, what is it, whats the history and in general be able to appreciate it better. Just do our bit in educating the end consumer more and also in return get inspired by their enthusiasm! Build a community, step by step. Good beer cannot exists without its patrons and in return we churn out beers that they can get excited about.” Quoted Shailendra when asked about his motivation to start the bootcamp.

The focus of day one was – brewing basics, understanding the beer ingredients, guided beer tasting and knowing the common beer flaws.The next day was dedicated to the recipe formulation & brewing process. The Brew day was much more relaxed in comparison to the first day and gave everyone a sneak preview of a day in brewers life.

This was the first time that Shailly decided to brew a Pale lager as bootcamp beer project or otherwise. ‘’It’s a weather inspired beer recipe’’ he stated and explained further that Pilsner or lager has a clean malt profile and it’s crisp and easy drinking which is suitable for the summers ; to satiate his hop hunger he drew inspiration from pale ale which has a good malt & hops balance. He explained further to brew a pale lager is marrying two styles – Lager plus pale ale , but at the same time keeping in mind that the hops should not overwhelm the malt character and neither should impart over bitterness.

He has been brewing here for last 5 years and hence is well accustomed to his brewing system efficiency, raw material and yeast performance ; based on the above and the targeted style the formulated( basic maths!) recipe for brewing a 1000 litres batch is – 205 kgs of malt ( 190 Kgs pilsner aka base malt and 15kgs of specialty malt (crystal malt) to aid some underlying malt sweetness and gold colour, Magnum hops for bittering at whirlpool stage ( > 80 degree C) and Amarillo hops addition for dry hopping (post wort fermentation) to impart citrus and orange notes to final beer. The water chemistry was unchanged as the Pune water profile (soft) is perfect to brew a lager or pilsner. The Beer is aptly named as BOOTCAMP LAGER and was available on Independence brewery (and taprooms taps in Mumbai & Pune from 28^th May 2019.

For beer nerds the takeaway from the bootcamp can be summarized as below:

• To formulate a recipe, a brewer must always choose a reference point i.e start from the closest classical style of beer to your own targeted style. This will define the reference beer parameters; also called as baseline parameters
• Then the next task is to tweak the recipe to match your preferred style and that melts down to two points – a) what beer baseline parameters to change and b) changes in ingredients to mirror the desired style.
• In a nutshell it can be concluded that knowing raw material, yeast, and overall system/process efficiency, will help a brewer to zero down it’s targeted beer style.

Rohit Arora