Citra pale ale

So I went on a trip to Chicago a few weeks ago to visit friends and drive up to green bay to watch my Bucs get beat up.... While I was there, I had the pleasure of tasting a delicious treat called zombie dust by three floyds. We then went and toured the brewery and I asked them how they make it...

This is MY version, I wanted a bit more bitterness.

10lbs 2row
1lb Munich
.5 lb carapils
.5 lb crystal 40

Mashed at 152F for an hour then a 60 min boil

1 ounce citra pellet first wort hopped
.5 ounce citra pellet at 15 min
1 ounce citra whole at about 8 min
1 ounce citra whole at 1 min

I'm not sure what my gravity was because as I was shaking the sanitizer off my hydrometer I accidentally threw it at the ground! I'm also going to dry hop it with an ounce of citra... Hopefully that will be enough. What do you guys think of the recipe?

Looks like a great recipe! I've done a few recipes pretty close to that except with crystal 60. Citra is very a very fun hop to play with. I love the aroma I personally get a ton of mango from it mixed with a little orange, grapefruit, passion fruit, and a hint of pomegranate. I have dry hopped a few times with 2oz of Citra for 9 days and wow the aroma is insane. Recently I dry hopped a batch with 3/4oz Amarillo and 3/4oz Citra. Those two go wonderfully together(one of my new favorite dry hop combos). But if you want to show off the Citra I'd go with 1.5oz for a week or so(1oz would do the job if that's all you have).

jheld00 said:

Looks like a great recipe! I've done a few recipes pretty close to that except with crystal 60. Citra is very a very fun hop to play with. I love the aroma I personally get a ton of mango from it mixed with a little orange, grapefruit, passion fruit, and a hint of pomegranate. I have dry hopped a few times with 2oz of Citra for 9 days and wow the aroma is insane. Recently I dry hopped a batch with 3/4oz Amarillo and 3/4oz Citra. Those two go wonderfully together(one of my new favorite dry hop combos). But if you want to show off the Citra I'd go with 1.5oz for a week or so(1oz would do the job if that's all you have).

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Do you dry hop in primary/secondary or in the keg? I've been doing the keg and leaving them in until it kicks, but I've found the hop aroma kinda goes south after 10-14 days. it's still good but it's not the crisp floral aroma you get from 7 days of dry hopping. I'm thinking about removing my dry hops after 7-9 days, but I'm kinda worried the aroma will fade even faster once they are gone.

As of late I've been racking from the primary to a keg. Then I dry hop in the keg(at room temp). I sanitize some shot glasses put them in sanitized panty hose with the hops after a week I pull them out and carb. I retain a pretty good aroma for 2 1/2 weeks or so. I also have been dry hopping in the primary which works really well. I was all about dry hopping in a carboy before but it is way to much extra work for no real added gain unless you like cleaning extra equipment.(also the added time the beer sits on the yeast really helps clean it up IMO)

Yea all I have is an ounce of citra left.. I might be able to get more if you think it will really make that big of a difference. You are definitely right about the passionfruit, when I drank zombiedust that is all I tasted

CrystalShip said:

Yea all I have is an ounce of citra left.. I might be able to get more if you think it will really make that big of a difference. You are definitely right about the passionfruit, when I drank zombiedust that is all I tasted

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An ounce would do it for sure, but if you want that insane Citra aroma go with two if you can get ahold of it. Either way it's gonna be awesome. Cheers

Looks good. Better than a lot of the recipes I see on here with 3lbs of crystal in a pale ale.

I am a big fan of citra and zombie dust. I think you will end up light on color, and probably need a lot more flavor/aroma hops to duplicate the hop punch of ZD. I would do at least 2 oz of dry hops for 7-10 days.
Here is my attempt(s) at cloning zombie dust: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/3-floyds-zombie-dust-attempt-help-info-requested-245456/index9.html

Not an exact clone, but damn close and really good. The S-04 turned out closer to the real thing. The S-05 had more bitter character, probably due to the lower final gravity. I added tasting notes somewhere around post #135. I plan to do it again in the next few weeks, but I have a few others to brew 1st.

The S-04 turned out well since Three Floyds supposedly uses an ESB strain for it, where S-04 is more English in character than -05.

That said, ZD is an incredible beer, and even if all you make is a Citra Pale Ale instead of a ZD clone, you shouldn't be disappointed.

I agree. I have a pack of Wyeast 1968 London ESB in my fridge to try on my next one.

skeezerpleezer said:

I agree. I have a pack of Wyeast 1968 London ESB in my fridge to try on my next one.

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Should be tasty. I'm going to do a Citra beer next year sometime. When, dunno.

Update on this beer: I bottled today after dryhopping for 10 days and it was quite tasty! Can't wait to have it cold and carbonated

I had to crack open a bottle of this on new years eve and after only being in the bottle for about 6 days, it was carbonated! Wow! So fruity and delicious the flavor from the citra is outrageous! I'm super happy with the way this turned out.

CrystalShip said:

I'm not sure what my gravity was because as I was shaking the sanitizer off my hydrometer I accidentally threw it at the ground!

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I just did this exact same thing a few weeks ago!! Haha too funny. Hydrometers are certainly fragile pieces of equipment.

I make a PM version of this style - all citra PA/Cream Ale. The best part - it turns out at somewhere between 3 and 3.5% consistently.

Recipe link (Hopville . "Lawnmower Light with Citra" Cream Ale Recipe), but:

% LB OZ MALT OR FERMENTABLE PPG °L
47% 3 3 Briess CBW Pilsen Light 34 2 ~
23% 1 9 American Munich 33 10 ~
15% 1 0 Briess Pilsen Light DME 44 2 ~
15% 1 0 Cara-Pils/Dextrine 33 2 ~


USE TIME OZ VARIETY FORM AA
boil 30 mins 0.5 Citra pellet 14.0
boil 5 mins 1.0 Citra pellet 14.0
dry hop 7 days 2.0 Citra pellet 14.0

uses Nottingham

bbbblaine said:

I just did this exact same thing a few weeks ago!! Haha too funny. Hydrometers are certainly fragile pieces of equipment.

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Yea, and the beers I had during the mash/boil didn't help either lol!

Okay, after reading this thread, I'm pretty interested in Three Floyds Zombie Dust... Any idea how I could get a bottle of this beer up here in the NorthWest (Portland)?

There is usually some Zombie Dust on eBay. It is pretty hard to get in bottled form, even at the brewery.

The thread I linked earlier in this thread is getting pretty close to cloning it, I plan to brew again with a couple modifications in the next couple weeks.

Looks delicious. My buddy made a small batch of all citra pale - it was a very small beer (~3.5%), but the Citra was awesome. Great bittering, and the flavor is fantastic. It starts out like a citrusy American hop, but it sort of levels off and goes into tropical fruit-mode - I thought it had sort of a pineapple taste, but not as tart. I liked it so much that I combined it with Fuggle in a strong bitter (15#M.O.+5ozrye flakes+5ozmed. crystal) - I can't wait to drink it. The tough part is, I've still got most of a # of it left - guess I'll have to brew some more beer or something.
Btw, why the pellets? I'm a relatively new brewer, but other than better availability, I just don't see an advantage to pellets. That pellet sludge can't be contained by a hop bag.

BrewMU said:

Looks delicious. My buddy made a small batch of all citra pale - it was a very small beer (~3.5%), but the Citra was awesome. Great bittering, and the flavor is fantastic. It starts out like a citrusy American hop, but it sort of levels off and goes into tropical fruit-mode - I thought it had sort of a pineapple taste, but not as tart. I liked it so much that I combined it with Fuggle in a strong bitter (15#M.O.+5ozrye flakes+5ozmed. crystal) - I can't wait to drink it. The tough part is, I've still got most of a # of it left - guess I'll have to brew some more beer or something.
Btw, why the pellets? I'm a relatively new brewer, but other than better availability, I just don't see an advantage to pellets. That pellet sludge can't be contained by a hop bag.

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Pellets are cheaper than whole hops at my Lhbs and also have more bittering potential per ounce than whole hops. This is why I use them at the beginning. Whole hops provide superior flavor and aroma so I use those at the end of the boil. I don't use hop bags and just pour the entire kettle of wort through a giant strainer on it's way into the bucket so I'm not really worried about the sludge (this strainer is seriously huge... Bigger than the opening of the bucket). I'm sure it would probably taste almost exactly the same using only whole hops

skeezerpleezer said:

There is usually some Zombie Dust on eBay. It is pretty hard to get in bottled form, even at the brewery.

The thread I linked earlier in this thread is getting pretty close to cloning it, I plan to brew again with a couple modifications in the next couple weeks.

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Very true, I went to the brewery in November and they didn't even have any on tap. There are online retainers that sell hard to get brews like Pliny and such, but I haven't really looked around for zombie dust

Thanks for the input. I suppose I will just brew a clone recipe for it once that thread gets closer to a final recipe.

I have a few more beers I'm planning on brewing before this one anyway