Flying Dog Yeast from Wyeast.

Has anyone used the Flying Dog Yeast strain that Wyeast has made available?

What are your impressions of it?

Anyone????

I have done two batches with it. I made a starter with the first and racked directly on the cake for the second. My impression so far is that both batches started off fast and continued to ferment actively for almost 2 weeks. I just kegged the first batch this weekend and the gravity ended at 1.010 (started at 1.058). This was my doggie style clone attempt. Too soon to tell about taste. The second batch I changed the recipe up a little bit and got poor efficiency, but the yeast appears to have done it's job.

Hey Bold, what info did you use to formulate your recipe? I'm thinking about trying the recipe that Flying Dog gave on its news blog.

http://flyingdogbreweryinfo.wordpress.com/2007/01/11/flying-dog-vss-home-brewer-recipe/

I went to their website and got this information:

Alcohol content: 5.3% ABV
Original Gravity: 1.052
IBU's: 36
Specialty Malts: 120L Crystal
Hops: Northern Brewer, Cascades
Process: Dry hopped with cascades during fermentation

I sent an email asking if they used any other grains and they replied back that they use canadian 2-row (I just used american 2-row) and the 120L crystal only. I used Beer Tools to calculate the potential gravity and IBUs. I used 1/2 lbs of the 120L crystal and 10 lbs of 2-row. 1 oz of NB for 60 minutes and .25 of cascades for 5 minutes. My efficiency was better than I anticipated so the ABV is way off. I am hoping by this weekend I will be able to do a side by side comparison to the real deal. I dry hopped with 1.75 oz of cascades so the aroma may take a while to match the real thing.

I saw that recipe online and did not feel it was true to what their brewers told me.

I did a side by side taste test and they are nothing alike. The real flying dog is more bitter, mine is smooth and sweet. I am going to up the carb level to see if that eliminates the smoothness. The color of mine is lighter also. I guess it is possible that I did not get good hop utilization. The formula flying dog posted most likely takes into account the homebrewer will fall short on certain numbers. It looks like they added the chocolate malt to hit a darker color and upped the IBUs to better emulate the bitterness.

Regardless I do have a tasty pale ale and I don't feel bad about spending the money on the yeast because I did get two batches out of it.

What kind of attenuation are you getting from this yeast?

I did not figure out the %, but the OG was 1.058 (higher than the real deal) and it finished off at 1.010 putting my ABV much higher than the real deal.