Can you Brew It recipe for Flying Dog Raging Bitch

[ReformedBrewer]

Brewed this yesterday...man what a long brew day. Between a very stuck sparge, a 90 min boil, and 80F ground water causing my beer to take forever to cool it just felt like it was never going to end. Either way I ended up with an 82% efficiency which I am very happy with and here is a pic of my a bit over OG. Did anyone else get a very very bitter wort out of this? The bitterness from that warrior just lingers and lingers, I hope it balances out.

 

[brewtime]

Once it's ferments and is carbed it will be vastly different. You can't go by the taste of unfermented wort. This is one of the best recipes I brew and is close to the real thing and FD is in my backyard.


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[IslandLizard]

Once it's ferments and is carbed it will be vastly different. You can't go by the taste of unfermented wort. This is one of the best recipes I brew and is close to the real thing and FD is in my backyard.

In Firebat138's RB thread brewtime was so kind to post the Stove Topper brewsheet that is packed with FD's Raging Bitch kit. Observe, there are no quantities listed for any of the ingredients, just a bag of this and that.

In that same thread brewtime also posted a RB recipe that apparently came off BeerSmith's recipe base. I'm still not sure what the true origin of that recipe is.

Please notice there are quite a few differences between Firebat's recipe, the "BeerSmith recipe" and the CYBI one above, the most glaring being the hop amounts and CYBI doesn't mention dry hopping at all.

I've brewed the "BeerSmith recipe" 2x, the last time pretty close to what was listed, except I pitched Belgian Ardennes (WY3522) instead of 3944 (Wit). I'm on the last day of dry hopping the batch, although I had siphoned out a gallon of early (short and agitated) dry hopped RB last week for an event. After the bit of hop bite subsided, I must say it's a really good impression of RB. FG is 1.010 down from 1.081 OG! There's enough sweetness left, while the dry hops and the bit of boozyness I detected earlier complement each other very nicely.

Here's why I'm puzzled. I just can't understand how the CYBI "clone" recipe can even compare, particularly missing the dry hops, which to my nose and palate are essential to this Belgian IPA.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[ReformedBrewer]

Once it's ferments and is carbed it will be vastly different. You can't go by the taste of unfermented wort. This is one of the best recipes I brew and is close to the real thing and FD is in my backyard.

How active was your fermentation? I made a 3L starter and it seemed to be crazy active in the starter but now that I pitched krausen isn't very large and it seems pretty tame. Fermentation started very quick (within 12 hours) but it just seems much less active than most other yeasts i've used.

 

[ReformedBrewer]

a bit of an update. Brewed this 16 days ago and my yeast has seemed to have given up. My current gravity is 1.034. It's still dropping but others have reported much lower gravity in this amount of time. Any suggestions for repitching? I got some harvested US-05 in the fridge? Thanks!

 

[IslandLizard]

a bit of an update. Brewed this 16 days ago and my yeast has seemed to have given up. My current gravity is 1.034. It's still dropping but others have reported much lower gravity in this amount of time. Any suggestions for repitching? I got some harvested US-05 in the fridge? Thanks!

Damn, that sucks!

One course of action is to make a pretty large starter (2-3 liters) and add it to your fermentor when it's at full krausen/highest activity.

Instead, you could transfer the beer to a temporary secondary, then make a huge starter from the left-over yeast cake, to revive it, and when it reaches high krausen, rack the secondary back on top. Make sure all the temps are around the max for the yeast when you rack it back, to enable it to resume and finish.

You can make the starter from a small new batch of the same or similar wort as you used to make the large batch to prevent "dilution" if you're concerned about that.

Now what yeast did you use, WY3944/WLP410 (Witbier)?

My last batch finished at 1.010 using 3522 (Belgian Ardennes), second generation.

 

[ReformedBrewer]

I used the suggested WLP400 Belgian Wit. Son of a ******. I'm going to swirl the primary and raise temp to 75 to try and get it going again first. I hope I can save this beer, so far it's tasting amazing and it was a pretty damn expensive recipe.

Damn, that sucks!

One course of action is to make a pretty large starter (2-3 liters) and add it to your fermentor when it's at full krausen/highest activity.

Instead, you could transfer the beer to a temporary secondary, then make a huge starter from the left-over yeast cake, to revive it, and when it reaches high krausen, rack the secondary back on top. Make sure all the temps are around the max for the yeast when you rack it back, to enable it to resume and finish.

You can make the starter from a small new batch of the same or similar wort as you used to make the large batch to prevent "dilution" if you're concerned about that.

Now what yeast did you use, WY3944/WLP410 (Witbier)?

My last batch finished at 1.010 using 3522 (Belgian Ardennes), second generation.

 

[IslandLizard]

I used the suggested WLP400 Belgian Wit. Son of a ******. I'm going to swirl the primary and raise temp to 75 to try and get it going again first. I hope I can save this beer, so far it's tasting amazing and it was a pretty damn expensive recipe.

You're not using a refractometer to measure your FG, are you?

What temp did you ferment at? Did the temp drop suddenly, putting the WLP400 into dormancy prematurely? How did you oxygenate the wort?

Just pitching new yeast without it being very active (high krausen) will likely not resuscitate the batch since there's quite a bit of alcohol present.
I hope swirling and raising the temps will wake it up.

It took my last batch 4 or 5 weeks to finish, using WY3522 at 67°F IIRC. It was bubbling steadily, but slowly all that time.

 

[ReformedBrewer]

Ok Ok...your last paragraph gives me hope. So to answer your questions...

1. No I am not using a refractometer, thankfully Im not that much of a n00b lol

2. No sudden Temp drop.

3. I used pure oxygen for 45-90 seconds...can't remember. Either way fermentation took off quite nicely, the buildup was just slower. At one point I had krausen into the blow off tube though and krausen is still stuck to the sides all the way up the neck of my carboy. I swirled and knocked some of it back down.

I am only a little over two weeks into fermentation so if your's took 5 weeks than maybe I am OK. I still have steady bubbling, my concern was the time it's taking to bring down the gravity. With most beers i've done, the gravity is within 2 points of my FG within 10 days and I just let it sit in primary for another 11 or so to clean up. Let me know if you have any other thoughts. Thanks so much!

You're not using a refractometer to measure your FG, are you?

What temp did you ferment at? Did the temp drop suddenly, putting the WLP400 into dormancy prematurely? How did you oxygenate the wort?

Just pitching new yeast without it being very active (high krausen) will likely not resuscitate the batch since there's quite a bit of alcohol present.
I hope swirling and raising the temps will wake it up.

It took my last batch 4 or 5 weeks to finish, using WY3522 at 67°F IIRC. It was bubbling steadily, but slowly all that time.

 

[Ryat66]

I am brewing this CYBI recipe this weekend and looking forward to the result!

I have ~50 all-grain batches under my belt and I don't typically worry about smells and little nuances along the way largely because my beers turn out just fine. However, I made a starter with WLP400, spun it for 24 hours and put it in the fridge to crash it out. Last night when I opened the fridge I caught a wiff of foulness and thought 'hmmmm...I wonder whats going bad?' I sniffed around for 10 seconds or so until realized it was the starter. For the record, I keep a hefe in regular rotation that uses WLP380 and while the fermentation produces some stank, I've never had the WLP380 starters smell funky like my current one with WLP400.

It's my first time using this strain so I'm most likely oversensitive but has anyone else ever noticed that with this strain?

As always, sanitation is on-point with PBW cleaning followed by StarSan.

 

[IslandLizard]

Pour some of the starter beer on top into a glass and taste it. It shouldn't smell or taste foul. I've never used WLP400, but her sister, WY3944 is very similar. It never smelled or tasted bad, and none of the sulphur Hefe yeast can throw. It is possible your 400 got infected or was mishandled at some point before you put it on the stir plate, but it is unlikely that happened during those last 24-36 hours. Infections incurred in starters usually manifest themselves later, after pitching.

I had a small reclaimed batch of 3944 Wit yeast that had grown a pellicle. It started to smell really bad after a few weeks so I tossed it.

 

[Ryat66]

Pour some of the starter beer on top into a glass and taste it. It shouldn't smell or taste foul. I've never used WLP400, but her sister, WY3944 is very similar. It never smelled or tasted bad, and none of the sulphur Hefe yeast can throw. It is possible your 400 got infected or was mishandled at some point before you put it on the stir plate, but it is unlikely that happened during those last 24-36 hours. Infections incurred in starters usually manifest themselves later, after pitching.

I had a small reclaimed batch of 3944 Wit yeast that had grown a pellicle. It started to smell really bad after a few weeks so I tossed it.

Thinking about this a little more...I forgot to mention that the starter smelled fine while on the plate. In fact, SWMBO said that it had a pleasant "baking bread" aroma and she usually ******* about the smell of yeast. It seems like this happened after putting it in the fridge.

Maybe the yeast didn't like going from room temperature to cold crash temps that quickly and expressed themselves a little bit...? It's a thought I had just now.

I will decant it tonight and see what it tastes like and report back.

 

[Ryat66]

I just decanted off a little bit of the starter liquid and it's actually sorta tasty, like I would expect a Wit to taste minus the low level of bittering. The starter definitely carries a sulfur aroma but I think it's just fine to pitch.

Island Lizard, you nailed this one! Thank you! I'm still humbled every time I brew something, I suspect that will never end.

 

[Ryat66]

I started drinking this beer last week. Overall, it's a pretty nice beer. I overshot OG by 15% and decided to just roll with it rather than dilute it. One week later I found out the scale at the LHBS was out of calibration, waaaaay out. I was a little concerned about the resulting underpitch but still ended up attenuating to 78%, right on target for WLP400. I did adjust the bittering on the fly.

I should point out a modification I made that personally I think is important. I dry hopped with 2 oz. of Amarillo @ 7% AA for 5 days at 67F. Regardless of what the CYBI recipe says, the kit that Flying Dog sells contains a packet of dry hop. As others have pointed out, I think it was missed in the interview with the brewer. Anyway, you have to be careful dry hopping with Amarillo because it can get a little funky but with my Amarillos coming in at 7% AA, I don't think 2 oz was too much here. Adjust according to your AA.

Also, it's important to note that this beer will benefit from a slightly higher level of carbonation. I originally shot for a standard 2.5 vol but the beer just didn't pop like Raging Bitch does. I grabbed a 6 pack and about halfway through the first bottle it occurred to me what was missing, more gas. So, I took it to 2.7 vol and find that to be a nice target level.