American Pale Ale Three Floyds Zombie Dust Clone

What is everyone's fermentation schedule for this recipe? How long and at what temp? Cold crash?

pitch @ 65F, ferment @68 probably 3 weeks and drink up citra drops out fast

MattyHBT said:

drink up citra drops out fast

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I plan to bottle so I wont be able to force carb. Would would you still ferment for 3 weeks? Or bottle as soon as gravity stays constant? Say 2.5 weeks? I've gotten in the habbit of letting my beers all go for 3 weeks.

Mike Page said:

I plan to bottle so I wont be able to force carb. Would would you still ferment for 3 weeks? Or bottle as soon as gravity stays constant? Say 2.5 weeks? I've gotten in the habbit of letting my beers all go for 3 weeks.

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yeah i would carb/condition as normal minimizing oxygen exposure the best you can than get them in a fridge..citra drops fast but i dont mean overnight

I also like to let my beer spend three weeks in the fermenter. Seems to clean up and stop out and it works for me. 2.5 would probably be fine as well.

I've only been home-brewing for about 6 months. This was my 6th brew, 2nd all-grain. So far its the only beer Ive been very pleased with. I dont know if its the recipe or my increased experience (honestly dont know what I did differently) but this turned out amazing and is the first one I feel comfortable sharing with my friends. Probably the best IPA Ive ever tasted...and I made it.

cheers bud

chaotic646 said:

I've only been home-brewing for about 6 months. This was my 6th brew, 2nd all-grain. So far its the only beer Ive been very pleased with. I dont know if its the recipe or my increased experience (honestly dont know what I did differently) but this turned out amazing and is the first one I feel comfortable sharing with my friends. Probably the best IPA Ive ever tasted...and I made it.

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Honestly, I'd wager that its a combination of gained experience and going all-grain where you have way more control over your mash and output. Don't get me wrong, good beer can be made from extract however once I made the switch, my product has been vastly better. Cheers!

grassfeeder said:

Honestly, I'd wager that its a combination of gained experience and going all-grain where you have way more control over your mash and output. Don't get me wrong, good beer can be made from extract however once I made the switch, my product has been vastly better. Cheers!

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My first all-grain was Yooper's Oatmeal Stout. I hit all my numbers but I think my water chemistry was off or something because it has very good flavor but literally no mouth-feel. My efficiency was fairly poor as well.

chaotic646 said:

My first all-grain was Yooper's Oatmeal Stout. I hit all my numbers but I think my water chemistry was off or something because it has very good flavor but literally no mouth-feel. My efficiency was fairly poor as well.

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I think you can count on efficiency being fairly poor until you start getting into some good equipment - I only hit 65% with my igloo cooler. Also, check you grain crush as well and see where you're at. As far as water, only you'll know that but if you're not at least filtering it I would suggest that no matter where you are.

Has anyone gotten and strange smells during fermentation of this recipe? I have three gallons of this in my chamber and every one I open it I get a very very strong vinger, almost rotten fruit smell. Not apatizing.

Please note, I did mess up the dryhopping. I read it as "1.5 oz on the first day" Whoops.

Naturally, I am worried as everyone says how great it smells. And I've got vinagar covered rotten apples over here.

Mike Page said:

Has anyone gotten and strange smells during fermentation of this recipe? I have three gallons of this in my chamber and every one I open it I get a very very strong vinger, almost rotten fruit smell. Not apatizing.

Please note, I did mess up the dryhopping. I read it as "1.5 oz on the first day" Whoops.

Naturally, I am worried as everyone says how great it smells. And I've got vinagar covered rotten apples over here.

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Yeah, that's not normal - even if you did dry hop on day 1 by accident.

UHG, I am going to taste it today when I get home. It's likely it's an infection... I went to my lhbs and they recommended PBW as a sanatizer. Didn't think twice to double check. Turns out its just a cleaner. I went for it any ways using a bleach water solution but I didnt trust it. Star-San from here on out. Thank you for your input. Live and learn....

Yep star-san is your freind. But it has to also be clean. So use PBW first

I started a batch just three days ago, and it's gone from 1.65 down to 1.005 already. That's probably the fastest fermentation I've experienced, so I hope it's alright. The Temp is controlled so it's not that. Anyway, I might rack into a secondary tonight and let it condition for a week or so. It looks like a great beer. Thanks for the recipe.

I've had beers this size fdrop to FG in 2-3 days plenty of times, especially with a good starter. Hitting FG doesn't really means it's done. There are still other reactions going on... Like the yeast cleaning up the byproducts of fermentation.

Nowadays, don't bother checking the specific gravity that often though... That only exposes it to oxygen, increasing risk of oxidation. I just let the beer ferment out for 2-3 weeks. Check the SG and if it's at FG (always is), then I keg it. I don't have to worry about bottle bombs either, so don't have to be too anal about it being exactly at FG.

The other thing is you basically should never be using a secondary. Again, this also exposes beer to oxygen and speeds up oxidation. Secondary is something that was commonly done 10-15 years ago but is no longer necessary. Of course there are some exceptions like if you want to bulk age for more than 6 monthw, add fruit, or sometimes with dry hopping when you're going to bottle. If you're kegging, you can dry hop in primary and or in the keg.

Last Friday I put a 1.068 mega hoppy IPA to ferment at 65. It was at 80% attenuation in 3 days, and was fully naturally carbonated in a serving keg by day 5. At 7 days and 4 hours has already been cold conditioned and put on tap.

It really does go that fast. Most people just don't check it with a hydrometer or refractometer to see this. It is very beneficial to be able to take samples of your fermenting beer, but one must realize in most cases if you have to open a vessel to obtain a sample the risk of oxidation isn't worth it.

Fermentation does not work in a fixed amount of time. If you're putting beer in primary for X weeks and in secondary Y weeks you really need to rethink what you're doing....

Recently I've been wondering how fast one could brew a beer if kegging. Even recently posted a question about it.

I've known for awhile they most beers hit FG within a few days (although I've had a few that took a couple weeks, but even these were 90% to FG in a few days).

Anecdotally, people seem to say it takes "some time" for the yeast to "clean" things up...metabolize byproducts and secondary alcohols. I've never really tested this though. Just usually let it ferment out in a primary for a week or 3, then keg whenever I get around to it.

fun4stuff said:

Recently I've been wondering how fast one could brew a beer if kegging. Even recently posted a question about it.

I've known for awhile they most beers hit FG within a few days (although I've had a few that took a couple weeks, but even these were 90% to FG in a few days).

Anecdotally, people seem to say it takes "some time" for the yeast to "clean" things up...metabolize byproducts and secondary alcohols. I've never really tested this though. Just usually let it ferment out in a primary for a week or 3, then keg whenever I get around to it.

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With a pressure ferment, no dry hopping and clean yeast (Nottingham for instance), about a week or so is all that's needed. 2 days at a few psi, a few more days at ~20 psi, and a couple more days to chill while on co2 gas to finish up carbonation if needed. The psi for the few days depends on ferment temp and desired volumes of co2.

My theory - If the yeast are still cleaning up, then they are still making pressure.

My other theory - test everything like this on a split batch of cheap pale/blonde ale . Use your normal ferment process for 1/2 to compare.

Other yeasts that need a rest at a warmer temp to "clean up" like some lagers and YMMV...

fun4stuff said:

Recently I've been wondering how fast one could brew a beer if kegging. Even recently posted a question about it.

I've known for awhile they most beers hit FG within a few days (although I've had a few that took a couple weeks, but even these were 90% to FG in a few days).

Anecdotally, people seem to say it takes "some time" for the yeast to "clean" things up...metabolize byproducts and secondary alcohols. I've never really tested this though. Just usually let it ferment out in a primary for a week or 3, then keg whenever I get around to it.

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I just kegged a batch after 10 days. I'll give it a 5-10 days in the kegerator to carbonate, as I'm not force carbonating it. I could report back on how it worked out. However, I've always just bottled beer, and this is the first brew that I've kegged for the new kegerator. So I don't have the frame of reference that others have.

I made a second batch of this, this time my OG was a lot closer to target but like an idiot I forgot to take a final gravity reading before I bottled. My plan is to wait until they are fully carbed, open one and let it go flat then take a FG from that. Will that work?

chaotic646 said:

I made a second batch of this, this time my OG was a lot closer to target but like an idiot I forgot to take a final gravity reading before I bottled. My plan is to wait until they are fully carbed, open one and let it go flat then take a FG from that. Will that work?

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It sure will

Brewed this today with my 4 month old baby girl. She doesn’t look interested here but I promise she was haha.

Did you hit your numbers? Did you make any change to the original recipe?

Great daddy moment up there. Frame it. Hang it in the brew shop/ man cave.

gnor said:

Did you hit your numbers? Did you make any change to the original recipe?

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Numbers were good, recipe tweaked a little...on accident haha.
I doubled the first hop addition cuz I read the recipe wrong. So I'm assuming it'll come out significantly more bitter

Ariza-Poet said:

View attachment 568922
Brewed this today with my 4 month old baby girl. She doesn’t look interested here but I promise she was haha.

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You gotta get you a baby carrier. Best 30 bucks I ever spent! My daughter is 6 months old now and I can do almost all brewing tasks with her on me. Even with the 10 gallon batches.

okay what day are you dry hopping? brewed this yesterday, it was happily bubbling away this morning. heard anywhere from day 3 of ferment to day 10.

I'm sorry folks, but I finally got my hands on a 6 pack of Zombie Dust and this recipe is nothing like it. There is another hop, like an El Dorado or something. Plus, is not nearly as malty.

I've brewed this verbatim 3 times and my home brew is much better. And considerably different.

thirstypanda said:

I'm sorry folks, but I finally got my hands on a 6 pack of Zombie Dust and this recipe is nothing like it. There is another hop, like an El Dorado or something. Plus, is not nearly as malty.

I've brewed this verbatim 3 times and my home brew is much better. And considerably different.

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Pretty sure you're wrong, but nice attempt at trolling bro.

To my tastebuds ZD seems to have changed quite a bit in the last couple of years.

Brewed a 2.5 gallon batch last night and pitched this morning. My OG came in a little light at 1.058 instead of 1.065. I had the fermenter volume in my software set at 2.5 gallons, but I think more went into the fermenter. Which I think is good since I'll lose some to trub but I probably was a bit light on my grain because of that calculation error, probably need to use 2.75 as my fermenter volume when calculating the recipe. Nonetheless I'm sure it'll produce beer and I'm excited to try it in a month. I've never had the real thing.

I've been browsing this thread as I plan on brewing it soon when I saw you guys talking about kegging time:

fun4stuff said:

Recently I've been wondering how fast one could brew a beer if kegging. Even recently posted a question about it.

I've known for awhile they most beers hit FG within a few days (although I've had a few that took a couple weeks, but even these were 90% to FG in a few days).

Anecdotally, people seem to say it takes "some time" for the yeast to "clean" things up...metabolize byproducts and secondary alcohols. I've never really tested this though. Just usually let it ferment out in a primary for a week or 3, then keg whenever I get around to it.

Click to expand...

fragged said:

With a pressure ferment, no dry hopping and clean yeast (Nottingham for instance), about a week or so is all that's needed. 2 days at a few psi, a few more days at ~20 psi, and a couple more days to chill while on co2 gas to finish up carbonation if needed. The psi for the few days depends on ferment temp and desired volumes of co2.

My theory - If the yeast are still cleaning up, then they are still making pressure.

My other theory - test everything like this on a split batch of cheap pale/blonde ale . Use your normal ferment process for 1/2 to compare.

Other yeasts that need a rest at a warmer temp to "clean up" like some lagers and YMMV...

Click to expand...

Old-ish posts so not sure if you guys still care but I went 6 days grains to glass with Brulosophers Hoppy Session Wheat:
Hoppy Session Wheat Beer

It was absolutely fantastic the second I tapped it. There were a few reasons I believe it worked out so well:

-Hop forward beer with simple grain bill.
-Lowish OG at 1.040.
-Large, healthy starter.
-Closed transfer method with spunding valve.
-Diligent fermentation schedule monitoring ie. pitch low and ramp after 48 hours.

In my opinion if you have most of these items in place you've got a good chance of a successful fast turn around. I'm taking a somewhat hoppy 5% wheat beer to a party this weekend that will be 14 days grains to glass. Mind you it just started tasting nice a day or two ago.

This thing was angry fermenter. I don't have a ton of headspace in my 3 gallon better bottle but this is the first one that blew my bung clean off. Definitely rigging up a blowoff tube going forward.

Just opened the tap on this, brewed two weeks ago. Was able to hit All of the numbers spot on.
Not quite fully carbonated yet, and it may not last long enough to get there either!
Never had Zombie Dust as I'm out of Australia, But speaking purely on this recipe it would have to be one of the most balanced, delicious, dangerously drinkable hop forward beer I've tasted, So satisfying to drink this after brewing it.
Thanks for the recipe skeezerpleezer, ill be brewing this regularly.

Currently fermenting this for a wedding.
Did a 10 gallon batch. This is the 3rd time I've brewed this beer and the first time I've actually understood the concept of "First Wort Hop."
I always just did it as soon as it got to boil, but now I did it right. So hoping to see some difference.
By far the best beer I've brewed

Well, it was only a 2.5 gallon batch I did but this keg came and went quickly. I've never had the original but this was a very solid brew. It had a taste in the background I haven't noticed before, maybe the melanoidin malt. I'll brew this again at some point.

chaotic646 said:

I've only been home-brewing for about 6 months. This was my 6th brew, 2nd all-grain. So far its the only beer Ive been very pleased with. I dont know if its the recipe or my increased experience (honestly dont know what I did differently) but this turned out amazing and is the first one I feel comfortable sharing with my friends. Probably the best IPA Ive ever tasted...and I made it.

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cudos
This really is a somewhat easy recipe for what yields an exceptional ale. I am yet to have the real deal 3F commercial version. If it’s any better, there should be a brewery dedicated to this pallet pleaser.

I just tapped my first try at the OP recipe. Only change is the yeast. I used WLP007 because I had it on hand. Absolutely fantastic beer!

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