FYI - for those interested. Flying Dog will be selling clones of their brews for home brewers. I've never had a FD beer - can't comment on that, saw it and thought I'd share - http://draftmag.com/beereditor/brew-your-own-flying-dog-beer/
My parental units are local to the brewery in Frederick and were kind enough to purchase me a kit and ship it to me yesterday, should be arriving here in VT within the week. I will report back soon! Looking forward to trying El Dorado hops - never had the chance to try them before.
Also- the 55$ price tag is a bit ridiculous, especially for some of the other beer recipes that I am sure could be put together for <30$. I will make freezer stocks of the yeast, though, to make up for it...
Not really a bad deal, i just purchased this kit and weighed out the ingredients, 19 lbs milled grain blend, 7 oz El Dorado, 2 vials yeast, kettle fining, gypsum, and a cool bag of swag!
Whaat? My box came with no SWAG! The parents must have sniped it as a finder's fee! Sad story: My 2 conicals of yeast leaked. VWR conical vials are not meant to take pressure. I believe they started with around 45 mLs in each.... I probably had 15-25 in each, one leaked more than the other. Anyway, no big deal as the positive pressure means they probably were not contaminated. Threw the remaining slurry in a 2L starter last night and it took off like no other! It was on a stirplate and somehow still formed enough krausen to overflow (irritating). So, I woke up to more yeast spillage. Should have used fermcap. Anyway, I am cold crashing the starter now and will decide what to do tomorrow. I don't think I'll have time to brew until next week, or more likely next weekend, so I will probably decant, split some out for later and then put another 2L of wort in to grow up more so that I have more than enough by next weekend. The kit was purchased last weekend, does anyone think there will be appreciable oxidation of the hops by next weekend? They are stored in individual bags, presumably not flushed with anything and are not under a vacuum. I have the pellets in the freezer (along with a bunch of simcoe and centennial that I scored today, good news for the averagely american IPA project!).
I think I found out why. They put the yeast in run of the mill conical vials; these vials don't hold pressure (think of the kind of pressure you get when shaking a WL vial)...so the yeast leaks out. Found out the hard way...
They plan to offer the RB kit in March. I'm going to buy one for research. I'm assuming they will be including the yeast they use.
Keep us up to date Sounds though like they aren't giving you the individual components, could make it a little tougher.
Yeah, at least for this kit, they tell you what malts they have included but they don't give you the ratios. You do, obviously, get type, timing and weights of all of the hop additions. They also don't tell you what finings are included, though I imagine it's probably just whirlfloc.
They also gave me a nice bag of gypsum in case I want to play with my water profile. Too bad that I rent and don't know what the water profile here is (and have been too lazy to get it done).
I'd love to see the Gonzo clone recipe. It's one of my favorite beers, but I haven't seen it in Texas for a quite a while.
Well, I just finished the mash and took a gravity reading... 1.067 with 9 gallons of wort. I think either my hydrometer is off or I mismeasured some volume because that is a mash efficiency of 87.5?!?! I am doing a BIAB mash.
Raging Bitch is released tomorrow. Next weekend, I'll be driving up to pick it up. I only brew in one gallon batches. so this will last me some time lol But im on with that, RB is one of my go to favorite beers
